MTo FLEAS AK* 





P.L.124 



QPO 9—1450 



The Good Neighbor 



SEVENTH EDITION 



Russell Sage Foundation 
Publication 



The Good Neighbor 

in the Modern City 



By 

Mary ErRichmond 

Author of " Friendly Visiting Among the Poor," General 

Secretary of the Philadelphia Society for 

Organizing Charity 




Philadelphia and London 

J. B. Lippincott Company 
I9 X 3 



.Kara* 



Copyright, 1907 
By J. B. Lippincott Companv 



Published November, 1907, 



TRANSFER 
D. O. PUBLIC UBBAOT 
SEPT. IO, 1940 



Printed by 
y, B» Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, I/, S. A, 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PROPERTY 
TRANSFERRED PROM PUBLIC LIBRARY 



775087a/ 



THIS little book was begun last summer in the 
mountains, where I had the encouragement 
and daily companionship of the best neighbor I 
have ever known. But before two chapters had 
been written, God called her, up there among the 
hills. The whole is now dedicated, most lovingly, 
to her memory. 

Philadelphia, November I, 1907. 



AND behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tempted 
him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal 
life? And he said unto him, What is written in the law? 
how readest thou ? And he answering said, Thou shall love 
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, 
and with all thy strength, and with all thy ?nind; and thy 
neighbor as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast an- 
swered right: this do, and thou shall live. But he, desiring 
to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor? 
Jesus made answer and said: 

A certain man was going down from Jerttsalem to 
Jericho; and he fell among robbers, which both stripped him 
and beat hi?n, and departed, leaving him half dead. And 
by chance a certain priest was going down that way : and 
when he saw him he passed by on the other side. And in like 
manner a Leviie also, when he came to the place, and saw 
him, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, 
as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, 
he was moved with compassion, and came to him, and bound 
up his wounds, pouring on them oil and wine; and he set 
him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took 
care of him. And on the morrow he took out two pence, and 
gave them to the host, and said, Take care of him; and 
whatsoever thou spendest more, I, zvhen I come back again, 
will repay thee. Which of these three, thinkest thou, proved 
neighbor unto him that fell among the robbers? And he 
said, He that shewed mercy on him. And Jesus said unto 
him, Go, and do thou likewise. 



Contents 

i 

PAGE 

Introduction 13 

The relation of modern charity to the parable of 
the Good Samaritan. Income-altruism 'versus ser- 
vice-altruism. Prevention and cure. Purpose of 
this book to describe the uses of the modern agencies 
that are the successors of the innkeeper in the 
parable.. Some modern difficulties : Stratification 
by income, indifference to neighborly contacts due 
to overcrowding, the clash of standards. The 
remedy of Christ. 

II 
The Child in the City 28 

Childhood's losses in the last fifty years. Com- 
pensations for these losses not evenly divided between 
rich and poor children in a badly governed city. 
What will make the city a fit place for all children 
to grow up in ? Their homes shape them for better 
or worse. Short cuts, like school feeding, of no 
avail j their real needs must be met by real remedies 
in the home. The city streets must be made fit 
places for children to play in. The playground 
movement. Condition of the schools a fair test of 
neighborliness. More exceptional needs : Neglected, 
defective, wayward and dependent children. 



Ill 

PAGS 

The Child at Work 44 

A millionaire's recollections of his industrial start. 
The city child's industrial chances now. Children 
of parents who could forego earnings. Children of 
widows. The factory 'versus the street. Indifferent 
inspectors. Educational tests for foreign children. 
What can each one do to help in the child labor 
campaign ? Children who are working legally. 
Choice of work. Evening classes. Extra schooling 
for exceptional children. 

IV 
The Adult Worker 54 

We influence the lives of workers by our choice 
of goods. Capricious expenditure. The craze for 
cheapness. Legitimate bargains. Equalizing work 
and wages throughout the year. Good effects of 
planning ahead. The Consumers' League pro- 
gramme. The sweating system. Relief in aid of 
wages. Hours of women workers. The industrial 
handicap of race and national prejudice. 

V 
The Tenant 66 

The old nurse and the model cottage. Absentee 
landlords. New York's housing reforms. The 
city that is supposed to have no tenements. What 
is a tenement ? Bad features of the house built for 
one family but occupied by many. The alley house. 
Causes of overcrowding. Experiences of a charity 
as tenant. Every landlord should see his properties 
in poor neighborhoods with his own eyes. What 
to look for. Volunteer rent-collecting. 



VI 

PAGE 

The Man on the Street 79 

* ' Worthy ' ' and ' i unworthy. ' * Phillips Brooks 
on giving. Less than one-tenth of those who need 
charitable consideration are beggars or vagrants, but 
these are ten times as much in evidence. What of 
the man who has slipped from under ? The va- 
grant needs more help than he gets. The three 
stages of helping, ( 1 ) money, ( 2 ) more ennobling 
circumstances, ( 3 ) character. We wrong any man 
when we make it possible for him to live without 
human ties and without occupation. Work-tests 
and shelters. The servant girl helps or hinders. 
Resident beggars. The deformed. Begging letter- 
writers. Child beggars. The case we know all 
about. 



97 



VII 

The Family in Distress 

The village, town and city periods of relief. 
The district plan 5 four indispensable features. 
Qualities of the trained charity worker j of the 
friendly visitor. Experiences of visitors. Relation 
of this individual work to the prevention of distress 
and to social betterment. 

VIII 
The Invalid 113 

Advances of modern medicine. But the inhabi- 
tants of our courts and alleys still lie wounded in the 
wilderness of Judea. Ways of helping. The cru- 
sade against tuberculosis. The health side of other 
evils that beset our neighbors. 



IX 

PAGE 

The Contributor 123 

Does the new charity discourage giving ? Indi- 
vidual giving. Appeals from charities. What 
should the contributor know before he contributes ? 
Commercial reporting agencies. Charities can be 
greatly improved by the contributor's attitude. The 
question of salaries. Cost of administration, service 
and relief. Example of service 'versus relief. Every 
new form of philanthropy has its fraudulent imi- 
tations. Self-appointed missionaries. Professional 
promoters. The making of wills. The frequent 
revision of lists of annual contributions. 

X 

The Church Member 139 

The clergyman who makes the city his work- 
shop. A different church situation — we cannot win 
Heaven by making other human beings less human. 
Relation between the church and secular charities ; 
the church supplies the motive, the charities supply 
the method. Charity is forever exploring, annexing 
and relinquishing. In the church itself, though 
upon a far grander scale, we discover this same 
process. What of the relinquished activities of 
medicine, statecraft, education ? Their greatest lack 
is spiritual power. This is the lack of charity also, 
which the church must supply. 



The Good Neighbor 

in the Modern City 



I 

Introduction. 

A CLERGYMAN who was on his way to 
-* ^ address the annual meeting of a large 
modern charity was warned by one of his 
parishioners that he had better not mention 
there the parable of the Good Samaritan. 

He retorted pertinently that we were now 
living in an age when there were wounded trav- 
ellers at every turning of the way, and still 
others hidden from our sight so sorely stricken 
that we should organize search parties to seek 
them out. The situation was further complicated 
by the fact that there were also prominently in 
view, to excite our pity, those who only pre- 
tended to be wounded and whose needs were 
»3 



14 The Good Neighbor 

not oil and wine, transportation and shelter, but 
a renewed zest for w T ork and for self-help. Under 
these changed conditions we must still follow the 
spirit of the Samaritan's ministry, he main- 
tained, if we would achieve the same neighborly 
result; but we must have more innkeepers, 
each one doing his special work, if all the real 
wounds were to be adequately cared for. 

The charitable society whose activities were 
thus defended fell far short of the standard 
of conduct given us for all time in the parable, 
but still it had striven honestly to find the wounds 
of modern society and to heal them. It was 
then trying to secure a compulsory education 
law in a State that had none; it was instru- 
mental later in getting little children out of the 
canneries and the textile mills and making 
their premature employment illegal; it is now 
trying to make its own bit of road safer for 
future travellers by bringing to light city hous- 
ing conditions that maim the poorer class of 
tenants. Hundreds of men and women with an 
impulse to be neighborly had learned, on its dis- 
trict committees, to become friendly visitors to 
families in distress, to master the more complex 



Introduction 15 

system of inns and innkeepers made necessary 
by our more complex life, to know the modern 
equivalents for oil and wine, and they had car- 
ried this knowledge, this daily habit of service, 
back into their church work and their homes. 

But the parishioner was a literally-minded 
man. He was unable to grasp the relation 
between a legislative committee and the older, 
simpler expression of neighborliness; he was 
shocked, moreover, by the society's known 
objection to the giving of small change to beg- 
gars on the street. The clergyman, on the 
other hand, used the society as the Samaritan 
used the innkeeper. He recognized that it 
was able to do certain things that his own 
duties would not permit him to do continu- 
ously, and yet he never made the mistake of 
throwing the whole task on an organization, 
believing as he did with all his heart that the 
ministry of life was a part of the ministry of 
religion. What he could do well himself he 
did with that humane touch which is the high- 
est instrument of healing and then, turning to 
his organized ally, "Whatsoever thou spendest 
more, I, when I come back again, will repay 



16 The Good Neighbor 

thee. " The society was only a modern con- 
venience; it was dependent upon the spirit 
of service that he and such as he poured into it. 
Stung, perhaps, by such unjust criticism as 
that of the parishioner, our modern innkeepers 
are too apt to undervalue personal and un- 
organized service. They are too likely to make 
such statements as the following from Pro- 
fessor Patten's very suggestive and interesting 
book on "The New Basis of Civilization. " 
Speaking of what he calls service-altruism, the 
charity of personal contact, and of income- 
altruism, the charity which makes gifts of money 
"for public and far-reaching ends," he says, 

The difference is that which separates the old 
from the new charity. The one crossed the road 
to help the Samaritan (x/V) after he had suffered 
under bad conditions of highway management 5 
the other patrols the road and arrests the wayside 
thieves before the traveller falls among them. 
Service-altruism binds the wounds, breathes for- 
giveness, and solaces the victims of recurring 
disasters without attacking their causes. Income- 
altruism hews to their base, for it has the money 
power to police and to light the road to Jericho. 



Introduction 17 

Money power is here given as the distin- 
guishing characteristic of effective charity. 
Income-altruism is indeed needed, but without 
a strong infusion of the service-altruism ot 
which Professor Patten speaks slightingly, it 
never kept anything policed and lighted, never 
"hewed to the base" since the world began, 
and never will. Policing happens to be a par- 
ticularly unfortunate illustration of income-altru- 
ism's power, for combinations between police 
and robbers are not unknown. Money is a bad 
master but a good servant; it supplemented 
the neighborly service of the Samaritan in the 
parable, but was no substitute for it. And lack- 
ing his spirit to-day, we may spend money like 
water in our campaigns of prevention, and still 
make little headway. 

Another common mistake made by those who 
write upon social questions in these days is to 
assume that "cure" and "prevention" are 
opposed to one another, and that prevention 
cannot get its just due until we spend less time 
in curing the ills of individuals. Never was 
there a more mischievous social fallacy! Pre- 
vention and cure must go hand in hand In 



i8 The Good Neighbor 

winning for the present generation of con- 
sumptives, for instance, the kindest and most 
adequate care, we are cutting out many centers 
of contagion and at the same time educating 
the public as to the true means of prevention. 
This has been the method of modern medicine 
and it may well be, in future, the method of 
modern charity. In the office of the country 
practitioner, in the crowded wards of city hos- 
pitals, and on the field of battle, medicine has 
sought and found, while pushing hard toward 
cure, the blessed means of prevention. 

The means of cure and prevention are not 
far from each one of us, nor does their use 
demand a great expenditure of time and effort. 
Each one, by taking a little thought, can do 
more than might at first appear without becom- 
ing either a trained expert or an income-altru- 
ist, and his service will weigh double when it 
is done, not in the patronizing spirit of the 
benefactor, but in the democratic spirit of 
the good neighbor. But the parishioner quoted 
as objecting to our new-fangled methods is 
not the only one who is confused by modern 
substitutions; he is not alone in failing to reaj~ 



Introduction 19 

ize that, when circumstances change, methods 
must be modified, or else the result will be 
different and not so good. 

Believing, as I do, that a wider recognition 
among charitable people of this need for modi- 
fied methods in our dealing with poverty and 
its causes must precede any great social ad- 
vance, I have set myself the task in this little 
book of trying to describe in a simple, straight- 
forward way and, if possible, without techni- 
calities, the various ways in which modern 
Samaritans may use the inns and innkeepers 
of today in assisting those who have fallen 
among thieves. There are many things that 
the good neighbor cannot safely leave to any 
agency, and this conviction, which I hold very 
firmly, would seem to be my chief qualification 
for the present undertaking. 

But one who attempted the larger task of 
interpreting neighborliness in all its aspects as 
affected by modern city conditions and not 
merely in its relation to poverty would encounter 
many difficulties that I escape. The relations 
of employer and employee, of the prosperous 
to the somewhat less prosperous who are their 



20 The Good Neighbor 

social competitors, the antagonisms of blood 
relationship, of creed, of race prejudice — these 
and other aspects of neighborliness I deliber- 
ately turn my back upon. And still the task 
remaining is more than formidable, for the 
poor are not a class apart with different char- 
acteristics, and any brief discussion of poverty 
and its treatment must seem to set them apart, 
must seem to emphasize unduly a bad modern 
tendency. 

As I go in and out of the homes of those of 
my friends who are not necessarily well-to-do 
but who are at least in no danger of want, I 
cannot avoid noticing how cut off they seem 
from association with any but their own sort of 
people. Their fathers and mothers came in 
daily contact as a matter of course with many 
kinds of people. Unconsciously but very rap- 
idly the children have been slipping away from 
this varied social experience, in which rich and 
poor, landlord and tenant, employer and work- 
man, purchaser and tradesman, dwelt together 
"in visible relationship;" they now live in a 
stratified world, where their social relations 






Introduction 21 

are sadly impoverished. The trolley-car, the 
suburban train, the telephone, and the reorgani- 
zation of our methods of production and dis- 
tribution, have changed the habits of human 
intercourse, and what Mr. Wells says of London 
is equally true in this country: ''Our people 
have overflowed their containing locality; they 
live in one area, they work in another, and they 
go to shop in a third. And the only way in 
which you can localize them again is to expand 
your areas to their new scale. " This was writ- 
ten of the areas of municipal administration, 
but it applies quite as well to a larger neighbor- 
liness. Those who ride live in a larger neigh- 
borhood than those who travel afoot, and those 
who ride by rail or by electricity can have 
larger community interests than those who 
ride behind horses, but this is such a recent 
expansion of opportunity that life has been, 
for the moment, narrowed thereby. 

Things — intervening and ever-multiplying 
things — are keeping us monstrously busy with 
the surface. We do not read or crave so much 
poetry; material comforts are choking within 
us the very springs of sympathy and compas- 



22 The Good Neighbor 

sion. The trolley and the train carry us away 
from the sights and sounds associated with 
distress, and we have not discovered that the 
lines travel both wavs, that it is easier than ever 
to seek out the distressed and to succor them. 

Civilization drops every now and then some 
necessary part of its luggage in this way and 
has to travel back to pick it up — an awkward 
process, or one that always seems so to the on- 
looker. We have had so many houses that we 
have been forced to rediscover fresh air, and so 
many cooked dishes that we have been forced 
to rediscover milk and eggs. How clumsily we 
have been doing this anyone who knows the 
details of the crusade against tuberculosis can 
testify. And now social contact with all sorts 
and conditions of men — a thing so necessary 
to our social health and sanity — this lost pack- 
age also we are recovering, but very clumsily. 

The most obvious remedy for this predica- 
ment is to seek opportunities for better ac- 
quaintance and greater helpfulness in our 
natural relations with the poor, but the diffi- 
culty is that too often no such relations exist. 
Let anyone think over the list of his acquaint- 



Introduction 23 

ances, the young couples, professional people, 
who live in the suburbs; the solid middle-aged 
people who have a town house and a country 
house; their son back from the technical school 
who has views about civics and about sports; 
their daughter who has left college and is 
beginning to find society a bore, or else who 
never went to college but came out early and so 
is growing restless and dissatisfied. They have 
their charities and their clubs and their " in- 
terests," but are they not for the most part 
hopelessly cut off* from real contact with their 
fellows and with the main stream of our na- 
tional life ? The only poor that they know at 
all are the parasites who seek them out, and 
the odd-jobs people who are still in some 
instances employed by them directly and not 
through a middleman. 

In the second place and side by side with 
this development of suburban life and of 
stratification according to income, we have 
the crowding of the poorer people in greater and 
greater density into our city streets and alleys. 
The poor cling tenaciously to neighborly tra- 
ditions, but when the degree of overcrowding 



24 The Good Neighbor 

in a city block passes a certain point the same 
indifference to neighborly contacts of which I 
have been complaining develops, though pro- 
duced now by directly opposite conditions.* 

And still a third condition of city life makes 
against "that sympathetic understanding which 
^lone knits men together. " One who has run 
counter to the standard of a small community — 
it may be in some rather absurd social conven- 
tion — will not soon forget the crushing weight 
of its moral condemnation. Wherever it is a 
clearly defined unit, the community standard 
is legislature, judge, jury and penitentiary all in 
one; the ordinary processes of legal enact- 
ment and enforcement seem clumsy by compari- 
son. But in the large city we have not one com- 
munity standard, we have twenty, each com- 
peting for recognition with all the others. The 
least successful native stock and foreign stocks 
have flocked in, bringing their own standards of 
living with them. In every matter which 



* See for the development of this idea i ' The Practice of 
Charity,' ' by Edward T. Devine, p. 21, sq., where a tenement 
dweller tells the story of her husband's refusal to warn the sleeping 
inmates of a burning house across the way. 



Introduction 25 

vitally concerns them and should concern us as 
their neighbors, in the education and employ- 
ment of children, the sanitation of streets and 
houses, the making, buying and selling of 
goods, we have this clash of standards. Hence 
our more frequent appeal to legislatures, and 
our laborious efforts to secure the enforce- 
ment of beneficent laws that are imperfectly 
understood. 

But to face these difficulties honestly is not to 
despair. "The twenty-five years just past," 
said President Eliot at the beginning of the new 
century, "are the most extraordinary twenty- 
five years in the whole history of our race. 
Nothing is done as it was done twenty-five 
years ago." Set over against this statement 
the contrasting fact that the road from Jerusa- 
lem to Jericho is still unsafe, that robberies 
have occurred there within the memory of men 
still living, and we get some conception of the 
difference between a static and a dynamic 
civilization. Into our dealings with the evils of 
a dynamic civilization bring once more the rem- 
edy of Christ, the remedy of a larger neighbor- 
liness, and the next twenty-five years would be 



26 The Good Neighbor 

as wonderful spiritually as the last twenty-five 
have been materially. To quote Professor 
Shaler, 

It is evident that while Christ set his face 
against all the sins of the flesh, He above all op- 
posed the motive of tribal pride and hatred. . . . 
He saw straight to the center of the ills that 
beset mankind ; saw that they lay in the lack of 
friendliness for the neighbor of every estate. He 
sought the cure where we have to seek it, in the 
conviction that whatever be the differences be- 
tween men, they are trifling compared with the 
identities which should unite them in universal 
brotherhood. 

Turning to the details of our subject, we have 
now to consider the bad conditions and reme- 
dial agencies that surround some of our poorer 
neighbors, including the city children at play, 
at school, at work, at home and in the city 
streets; men and women who make the goods 
we buy; tenants who live in the houses we 
build and rent; men without homes who stop 
us on the street; families that have been wors- 
ted in life's struggle by accident or death; and 



Introduction 27 

the sick who should have been strong and well. 
Last of all, the good neighbor himself will con- 
cern us, first as a contributor to diverse good 
causes, then as a member of some church 
pledged to hasten the coming of Christ's King- 
dom upon earth. What untoward conditions 
that surround the lives of these city dwellers is 
he in a position to remove ? What agencies 
exist to help him, and how can he most con- 
veniently and effectively use them ? 

As a practical help, a number of blank pages 
have been provided at the end of this book for 
the addresses, telephone numbers and office 
hours of those specific local agencies which 
correspond most closely to the charities re- 
ferred to in general terms in its pages. The 
local charity organization society or associated 
charities will always take pleasure in providing 
these addresses upon application. 



II 

The Child in the City. 

A RECENT writer estimates that seven new 
-* *• citizens are born into the English-speaking 
world every minute, and he declares that the 
chief business of every statesman, every social 
organizer, every philanthropist and every man 
should be to see that the world does its best 
for these newcomers. 

"Doing its best" means different things at 
different stages of the world's development. 
Formerly the town council did its best when it 
permitted the streets to follow the ancient cow- 
paths, but now, if the council is wise, it employs 
such experts as Olmsted and Robinson to pro- 
vide plans of municipal improvement for the 
next fifty years. There is a wonderful amount 
of good child-saving work being done in our 
cities, but too much of it just happens like the 
ancient paths. 

Part of the difficulty lies with those of us who 
wish sincerely to be good neighbors. We are 
28 



The Child in the City 29 

not only hampered by our imperfect recollec- 
tion of what it means to be little and young, 
but by our failure to understand the great 
changes in living conditions in the city since 
we ourselves grew up in it. Childhood's losses 
in the last fifty years are very imperfectly rea- 
lized. Many processes formerly carried on in 
the home that were both wxsrk and play, that 
were full of dramatic incident and educational 
interest for the children of the household, are 
now hidden away in shops and factories. As 
we shall see later, the shops and factories them- 
selves cannot make up to the child w T hat he has 
lost; there is no opportunity for him in the gas 
works or in the woollen, flour or saw mill, that 
can even partially compensate for the w T hole 
process of our domestic industries.* 

, A generation ago we may not have followed 
this whole process from the trying of fats to the 
dipping of the candle, from the raising and shear- 
ing of sheep to the plying of the loom, from 
the grinding of grains to the baking of the loaf, 



*See " The School and Society," by John Dewey, to whom 
social workers are indebted for a saner view of this subject. 



30 The Good Neighbor 

but we were much nearer to it than we are to- 
day. Our chances of being country bred, more- 
over, were two and a half times as great as they 
are now ; the birds of the air, the beasts of the 
field, and the fields themselves, were two and a 
half times as likely to have assisted in our educa- 
tion, and we were not half as liable to arrest for 
playing in the streets in an effort to make up for 
their loss. Pure milk and pure air, unadulterated 
foods, physical exercise, early hours of rest — 
all of these good things were more likely to 
contribute to our growth, and we were saved 
from the feverish, unwholesome excitements — 
the moving pictures, low theatres and gambling 
schemes — that lie in wait to-day at every turn 
for the pennies of the city child. 

There are many compensations for these 
losses of the child in the city, and there might be 
many more; but the compensations are not 
evenly divided in a place that is badly governed. 
In a badly governed city the losses fall with 
crushing weight upon the children of the poor, 
while the children of the well-to-do are bought 
off, as is were, from the more obvious effects of 
mal-administration. If the city's schools are 



The Child in the City 31 

ill-taught and ill-ventilated, the well-to-do send 
their children to private schools; if the street* 
are unclean, the drainage bad, the water im- 
pure, they take them away for a number of 
months in each year, and put expensive filters 
in their city homes or else buy spring water; if 
the police department is inefficient, they hire a 
private watchman; if vice pays tribute for pro- 
tection, it is at least not permitted to show its 
head in the better residence neighborhoods. 

But children are going to continue to grow 
up in cities in larger and larger numbers; in- 
stead of denouncing the city and all its ways, 
therefore, it would seem to be the part of neigh- 
borliness to begin at once to make it a fit place 
for all children, including the children of the 
poorest, to grow up in, and to do this in no 
spasmodic, panicky way, but steadily and per- 
sistently. We know approximately what needs 
to be done, but those who have most influence 
do not feel the pressure of this need, and are not 
imaginative enough to realize vividly the needs 
of their neighbors. 

Aside from the church, whose influence will 
be considered later, the social agencies that 



32 The Good Neighbor 

have most to do with shaping the normal city 
child, the child with both parents and all his 
faculties, are the family, the street, the school, the 
workshop, the bureau of health and the police. 
Work and health I reserve for separate chapters. 

The best and most ancient institution for the 
care and education of children is the family. 
I am in entire sympathy with those who hold 
that changes in modern industry and the re- 
moval of many industrial processes from the 
home make a reorganization of the school 
necessary. It is indeed imperatively necessary 
that we give industrial training a more promi- 
nent place in our school system and that we 
lengthen the period of school attendance. But 
the habit of changing things may become a 
fever, and in the hurry to readjust these rela- 
tions of home, school and workshop to the life 
of the child, there is danger at the moment that 
the home may suffer — I had almost written 
irreparable loss, but the institution of the fam- 
ily has survived very formidable foes. We may 
encourage women to leave their homes and 
their children for the factory; we may extend 



The Child in the City 33 

our day nurseries beyond their legitimate use as 
shelters for the children of those widows or 
those wives of disabled men who cannot pos- 
sibly remain at home during the day, and re- 
ceive in these nurseries any child whose mother 
wishes to be relieved of home cares; we may 
develop a hundred agencies for providing chil- 
dren with the necessaries of life, as our ideas 
about necessities expand; but, sooner or later, 
we shall rediscover the old truth that we cannot 
save the children without saving the homes 
that shape them finally for better or for worse. 
So long as family life continues, both the 
quantity and quality of that life will be con- 
trolled far more from within than from without. 
In the desire to get good results quickly we may 
repeatedly ignore this, though, if we believe 
sincerely in the neighborly, one-by-one way of 
helping, in the retail method of reform, we shall 
not be daunted by the check that must come 
inevitably to each wholesale movement in turn 
as it touches this most fundamental fact oi 
family life. But things that can never be ac- 
complished outside the family by measures the 
kindest and best intentioned, can be accom- 
3 



34 The Good Neighbor 

plished inside the family by contact, by per- 
suasion, by neighborly help and by sympathy. 
To bring back to each home a new sense of the 
child's needs, to lift the standard of the whole 
family slowly but steadily as regards defective 
vision, hearing, breathing, speech and nutri- 
tion, will be more effectual in the long run than 
any of the short cuts (to take two recent in- 
stances) for providing oculists and spectacles 
free, or for providing meals free to school 
children without regard to the responsibilities 
of parents or their ability to meet them. 

If the wage-earner cannot afford to buy glasses 
for his child, does not something need readjusting 
beside the vision of the scholar ? How regularly 
would spectacles freely provided be used ? How 
long would they remain unbroken ? Why should 
spectacles be provided for all children when dis- 
pensaries and other agencies can provide them 
for the relatively few children whose parents are 
unable to do so ? 

If a child comes to school looking underfed, 
the promptest and easiest remedy is undoubtedly 
a school lunch, but what if the anaemia persists ? 
What if the cniid gets the wrong things or noth' 



The Child in the City 35 

ing at all for breakfast and supper ? What if we 
make it still easier for the woman as well as the 
man of the family to be away all day and leave 
all the children, including those below school 
age, unmothered ? Does the lunch meet these 
other needs or does it only delay the meeting of 
them a little longer ? * Surely the only way of 
dealing with the real needs of school children is 
by real remedies, such as those adopted by the 
New York Committee on the Physical Welfare of 
School Children, which sends visiting cooks into 
the homes of children apparently ill-fed, and 
wins the co-operation of the mother in devising 
better ways of buying and preparing food, or, 
where the income is insufficient, seeks through 
the allied Association for Improving the Con- 
dition of the Poor the means of supplementing 
it. In several cities the experiment is being 
tried of a paid school visitor, one who has been 
trained for social work and whose duty it is to 
act as intermediary between the school with 
which she is affiliated, the charities, and the 
homes of the children. 



*See Charities and the Commons, Vol. XVII, p. 1104, 
u School Lunches in Milwaukee," by Zilpha D. Smith; and the 
Yale Review, Vol. XV, No. 3, " Feeding of School Children,* * 
by C, S. Loch. 



36 The Good Neighbor 

To approach any relief question from the 
point of view of the child's welfare only and to 
consider nothing else, is a natural enough mis- 
take to make, but its effect upon the child's 
life is disastrous. "It seems to be almost in- 
evitable," says Mrs. Bosanquet, "that the man 
who accepts a subordinate economic position 
in the family degenerates into a loafer and 
tyrant." We may hold the most approved 
views about family life, and still be actively 
engaged in breaking it up, when we fail to treat 
all questions of income and relief as the affair 
first of the head of the family, of the mother 
only secondarily, and of the children not at all. 
School teachers ignore this principle when they 
collect clothing, shoes and money for relief 
after hearing only the child's account of the 
need at home; church and Sunday school 
workers also ignore it too often in their various 
relations with needy families. 

The same principle applies to other things 
beside relief. A New England pastor who used 
to seek eagerly in the poorer streets of his town 
for children who were attending no Sunday 
school, and then persuade them to come to his, 



The Child in the City 37 

adopted a sounder method when he called upon 
the father of the family and formally asked his 
permission to invite the children. He found 
that this little act of thoughtfulness helped to 
revive a sense of responsibility that had long 
remained unappealed to in the midst of our 
bustling benevolences. And what has benevo- 
lence to offer in exchange for family affection, 
for all the beauty and depth of it, rooted firmly 
as it is in the sense of responsibility ? 

I have said that the city might be made a 
much safer and more attractive place for chil- 
dren to grow up in. What might each one do to 
bring this about ? 

In the first place, we might, instead of talk- 
ing so persistently about the importance of 
keeping them off the streets, talk much more 
about the importance of making the streets 
cleaner places, in every sense, for children to 
run about in. City children must be out of 
doors often if they are to be kept healthy, and 
the city's out-of-doors should be well enough 
policed, lighted, cleansed and protected from 
illicit traffics of all sorts to be a fit place for chil- 



38 The Good Neighbor 

dren to spend a part of each day. We must 
provide wholesome amusements in plenty and 
then deal rigidly with the unwholesome re- 
mainder. To begin at the other end is to ignore 
nature's way and to wage a losing fight against 
the cheap theaters and other immoral shows to 
which children now flock in great numbers. 

The playground movement for providing edu- 
cational and well-organized play on a scale as 
extensive as our school systems, is now launched; 
and no one thing, if it receives the intelligent 
support of all good neighbors, will do more to 
make the city a better place for children. Not 
only the ignorant and careless parent, but the 
good, conscientious one, if condemned by pov- 
erty to a poor environment, must often see the 
more active and masterful of his children go 
straight to the bad through the misdirection of 
their play instincts. Playgrounds, recreation 
piers, outdoor and indoor gymnasia, boys' and 
girls' clubs, vacation schools, country outings, 
school and home gardens, music and pictures 
and outdoor festivals — what attractive oppor- 
tunities all of these offer for the good neighbor 
who wishes to share his capacity for enjoy- 



The Child in the City 39 

ment! Chicago leads at present with an aggre- 
gate annual attendance of five millions in her 
recreation centers, but if the good people of any 
city could only realize the vital relation of 
healthful, honest, well-directed play to citizen- 
ship, industrial efficiency and morals, this figure 
would soon be dwarfed. 

The streets and the schools should be every- 
body's affair, and the condition of the schools 
— for to these at least we are already fully com- 
mitted — would be a very fair test of the true 
neighborliness of a community. If the school 
houses are some of them so crowded that pupils 
can be given only half-time instruction, if the 
buildings are ill-ventilated and unsanitary, if 
the teachers, janitors and superintendents are 
subjected to political interference, then we are 
letting the most helpless members of the com- 
munity fall among thieves. How can we, as a 
Christian people, hold up our heads, until for 
the sake of the children we have taken the de- 
partments of education and of health in our 
cities out of politics ? 

We can also encourage those educators who 
are striving to secure the extension of indus- 



40 The Good Neighbor 

trial training, and the better physical care of 
school children through improved school build- 
ings, and through systematic medical inspec- 
tion; and we can encourage and support all 
citizens' movements for the betterment of 
schools, such as the public education associa- 
tion and the parents' association. Without 
going in the least out of our way, we can aid 
the school authorities by reporting to the com- 
pulsory education bureau all children of school 
age known to us that are not attending regularly. 
And next to our interest in these larger and 
more normal aspects of child life must come a 
watchful care for those whose needs are more 
unusual. Is a child beaten unmercifully, or 
cruelly neglected, or exposed to grave moral 
dangers ? A day is too long to leave an impres- 
sionable child or any child in such surround- 
ings. The more profoundly we believe in the 
rights and responsibilities of parents, the more 
quickly we will recognize this, and report the 
facts to the society to protect children from 
cruelty, following up our complaints to dis- 
cover what obstacles, if any, still interfere with 
a proper enforcement of the law. 



The Child in the City 41 

Short shrift should be made of tobacconists, 
saloon-keepers and dive-keepers who trade 
illicitly with children. 

Is there a crippled child, or one with defec- 
tive sight, hearing, breathing or speech, who is 
not now receiving the best medical care ? We 
should use our influence with the parents to 
see that advice is sought promptly, and that the 
doctor's instructions are carried out. Is there a 
child whose father or mother complains of his 
waywardness, perhaps calling him "incor- 
rigible" at the age of eight or nine? He too 
needs, or more often the parent needs, advice 
from some child-saving specialist who knows 
how to deal with the beginnings of waywardness, 
for both physical and moral defects yield best to 
treatment in the earlier stages. 

Is there a child about to be separated from his 
parents or his widowed mother because of pov- 
erty ? The best and most experienced advice is 
needed here. The neighbors will say, "Put 
him away," and the charitable, though not 
using this phrase, will often suggest placing 
him in this or that institution; but the child's 
whole future is involved, and the decision 



42 The Good Neighbor 

should not depend upon our own convenience 
or preferences. There are children's aid 
societies or like agencies that exist to deal 
wisely with such emergencies. It may be that 
they can discover ways of keeping the family 
together. 

One of the best organized departments of 
public charities that I ever saw was in charge of 
a major of the United States Army in Cuba. 
The task of his superintendence had been 
thrust upon him without preparation, only a 
few months earlier. But he had acquired 
somewhere the excellent habit of recognizing 
promptly his lack of knowledge and of seeking 
out at once the best available person from 
whom to learn. In all questions concerning 
the welfare of children, involving as they do 
a knowledge of recent and vital changes in 
city life, a knowledge of child psychology, and 
a knowledge also of the foundations of the 
family and of the effects of charitable action 
thereon, we find ourselves in a field requiring 
more than any other, perhaps, trained sym- 
pathy and clear judgment. If we acquire the 
habit of imitating the army major, of knocking 



The Child in the City 43 

at the right door and boldly asking questions, 
we shall all become better and more useful 
neighbors. 

As already indicated, the doors at which we 
are most likely to need to knock, and with the 
addresses of which we should therefore be 
provided, writing them down at the end of this 
volume or keeping them in some other conven- 
ient place, are the doors of the public education 
association, the parents' association, the depart- 
ment of education, the compulsory education 
bureau, the playground association, the chil- 
dren's country outing society, the society to 
protect children from cruelty, the probation 
officers, and the children's aid society. 



Ill 

The Child at Work. 

OOME years ago an appeal was made to a 
millionaire to contribute toward the support 
of certain training classes for boys newly ar- 
rived from Russia who were his co-religionists. 
He was a humane man and a generous one, 
but he refused, on the ground that he had 
made his own way unaided by such instruction 
when he had come to this country fifty years 
before, and that the struggle had been good 
for him. 

Struggle is good for all of us, but what would 
have made the millionaire understand that the 
industrial start for a boy of ten or twelve is now 
made with an unreasonably heavy handicap, 
that the situation is no longer the same? He 
came to a land where the railroad was just 
beginning to connect city with city. He started 
into the country from one of the middle- Atlantic 
ports with a pack on his back, carrying to iso- 
lated farms and villages the goods for which 
44 



The Child at Work 45 

there was brisk demand. What incidentally 
did he learn ? English, geography, arithmetic, 
trade, human nature. Perhaps, like Bob 
Jakin, he had the solace of a dog; certainly he 
had the free air of heaven, and could there have 
been a better preparation for the life of that 
time! The educational values of the whole 
process were his, whereas now his modern 
successor, thrust into the factory upon his 
arrival, without our language, without school- 
ing and without his physical growth, knows 
only the benumbing effect upon mind and body 
of an infinitely subdivided process, in which he 
goes through a few monotonous motions for 
many hours daily. Or another "dead-end" occu- 
pation, as they are descriptively called, claims 
him and he becomes a bundle-boy. Or perhaps 
he enters the district messenger service and is 
sent to disreputable houses late at night, learn- 
ing as his first lesson the worst that America has 
to teach. 

One who has herself transgressed through 
ignorance cannot blame the millionaire. I too 
have legislated in district committees for the 
generation that I remembered from childhood 



46 The Good Neighbor 

experiences instead of for the generation that 
the committee decisions affected. Self-support 
at any cost seemed the important thing, and 
the mill-owner's wife on the committee acted 
in perfect good faith when she assisted us, in 
case after case, to get work for the young chil- 
dren of widows and of disabled fathers. But 
the subsequent history of these families and 
children, as we followed their careers for a 
number of years, opened our eyes; continu- 
. ous care of families has this advantage over 
spasmodic care, that we learn from our blunders. 
The thrifty self-reliance that we had hoped to 
foster did not develop. Some of the working 
children could not read and write; many others 
forgot before they were fourteen all that they 
had learned in school under the ages of ten and 
eleven; their moral and physical tone was 
lowered; and gradually we came to see that the 
best provision for a destitute widow left with a 
number of children of school age was to assure 
their entry into industry one by one under 
conditions that would guarantee to her their 
increasing industrial efficiency. This meant 
that they must have an elementary school edu- 



The Child at Work 47 

cation, and that they must not be employed 
long hours at regular work before the period 
of adolescence. 

Comparison of results in various city neigh- 
borhoods brought out the further fact that the 
illiterate, devitalized working child was not 
always or even usually the child of the depend- 
ent widow or of the disabled father, but that 
many young children were in the mills, fac- 
tories and glass houses whose parents were 
prospering and could perfectly well forego 
their children's earnings for several years longer. 
The poorest city neighborhoods had not the 
largest numbers of w r orking children; those 
most convenient to the mills and factories, 
those in which the industrial opportunity was 
the greatest, were the ones in which families 
had yielded most easily to the temptation. 

The " widowed mother ghost," as Miss 
Addams calls it, had figured too largely in our 
calculations. She tells of one manufacturing 
town where a school census was taken that 
showed 3600 children on the census roll but not 
in the schools. Of this number 1100 were out 
of school for legitimate reasons, such as attend- 



48 The Good Neighbor 

ance at private schools, removal, illness, &c. 
Of the remaining 2500 only 66 were the chil- 
dren of widows, and of these 66 it was found 
that 23, or less than one per cent, of the 2500, 
were contributing to the support of their moth- 
ers. Why should these 2500 be permitted to 
work in order that the 23 widows might con- 
tinue to be supported by their children ? Would 
not a neighborly care of these few families 
through private pensions carefully adminis- 
tered — would not this small expenditure of 
time and money until the children of the 23 
were fully able to work, have helped the physi- 
cal, industrial and moral future of the whole 
2500? 

Next to the widowed mother argument, we 
hear most of the street and its dangers as a 
reason for putting children to work very early. 
The plea that our schools are overcrowded is 
irrelevant, as the crowding is in the grades for 
younger children, for whom even the advocates 
of child labor would hardly suggest the factory 
as a substitute. Our compulsory education 
laws must be enforced, of course, and the child's 
play time must be turned to account educa- 



The Child at Work 49 

tionally, as we have already seen. But the 
street without these rivals and unregenerate 
as it now is has been found by those who know 
child life in cities intimately to compare favor- 
ably as a school with the glass house, the mes- 
senger service and most other occupations open 
to children. The superintendent of the House of 
Refuge at Glen Mills, Pa., a school for wayward 
boys between ten and sixteen, declares that he 
has very few boys there who were not working 
boys at the time of or just before their arrest. 

To secure the release of a boy of twelve, just 
recovered from diphtheria and with a tendency 
to tuberculosis, from illegal employment in a 
Pennsylvania glass house, where he was work- 
ing alternate night and day shifts of 9*^ and 10 
hours each in a superheated atmosphere, required 
this spring the energetic efforts of three volun- 
teer societies. 

After working hard to effect similar rescues, 
one begins to wonder how long a State will 
endure an expensive Factory Inspection Depart- 
ment which has no sympathy with the honest 
enforcement of the child labor law, and con- 
tinues to keep in office inspectors who violate 
4 



50 The Good Neighbor 

its provisions. The real difficulty, of course, 
is in the lack of neighborly contacts. If a thou- 
sand good neighbors in my city saw a hun- 
dredth of what I am forced to see, no moving 
appeals would be needed. The plain facts 
would make their own appeal, and the employ- 
ment, for wages, of children under fourteen, 
their employment all night in glass houses and 
foundries under the age of sixteen, and the 
employment of foreign-born children under 
sixteen who cannot read and write English, 
would become impossible. 

Demagogues appeal to foreign voters by de- 
claring that this effort to exclude children under 
sixteen who cannot write English is a discrimi- 
nation against foreign labor. It is really a 
measure in the interests of foreigners, in that it 
hastens their Americanization, or else encour- 
ages them to seek homes away from our con* 
gested centers of population. One may have 
little sympathy with the efforts to restrict im- 
migration to this country, and yet may see the 
advantage of regulating it by means of effective 
child labor and housing laws, for no one will 
profit more directly than the immigrant him- 



The Child at Work 51 

self when we shall at last come to maintain a 
good minimum standard of child care and of 
sanitation in our cities. 

Nothing that has been said against the em- 
ployment of young children, or of those who 
have had no schooling, should be interpreted as 
showing a half-hearted sympathy with the em- 
ployment of older children in our factories and 
workshops. The crisis in the physical life of 
the child once past, and the school given its 
fair chance with him, the factory will, under 
good modern conditions of organization, give 
him the discipline and the industrial opportun- 
ity that he needs. Factory owners have had to 
bear more than their share of abuse for labor 
conditions, because they happen to be the chief 
offenders in one section of the country. One 
who has had the co-operation of some of the 
best of them in more than one child labor com- 
paign can testify that many would welcome an 
honest and strict enforcement of the laws that 
exclude children under fourteen from wage- 
earning occupations. 

What can each one do to help in the long 
campaign, only just begun, for the better pro- 



52 The Good Neighbor 

tection of childhood from premature employ- 
ment ? We can help to form an overwhelming 
public sentiment against dishonest inspectors; 
we can learn the provisions of the present child 
labor law; and we can report all children known 
by us to be working illegally to the factory 
inspection department, to the compulsory edu- 
cation department (if they are of school age), 
and to the State child labor committee. 

What can we do to help the children who are 
working legally, or who are about to enter upon 
work ? The choice of work in which there is 
a fair chance of advancement and an oppor- 
tunity to acquire real skill is most important. 
Parents are often glad of advice here; and no 
little care will be needed, in the present state 
of industry, to avoid unhealthy and dangerous 
occupations, and to discriminate between work 
that prepares for future usefulness and " dead- 
end " work. Evening courses at technical 
schools cannot be recommended for the ambi- 
tious boy or girl under sixteen who is working 
all day, but for children over sixteen who are 
in good health they give, in many of our larger 
cities, the very chance of advancement that the 



The Child at Work 53 

daily work does not give, and I am interested 
to see how many young women who apply to 
me for positions have supplemented a meagre 
school training by attending clubs, settlements 
and colleges that give evening instruction. 

Then there is the child just past the school 
age of fourteen who, having shown real apti- 
tude for study, should be helped to continue 
in school by a special scholarship, if necessary. 
The "waste of ability" that comes from our 
neglect to fit exceptional children for the work 
they could do best is quite as tragic in its way 
as physical distress. Ignorance is, indeed, the 
crudest of thieves; it robs and wounds us in so 
many ways, md the wounds are never healed. 

Under this section of our subject, we should 
have the addresses of the State child labor com- 
mittee, the compulsory education bureau, the 
factory inspection department, the department 
of education, the working girls' clubs, the other 
clubs for boys and girls, the young men's and 
women's Christian associations, the technical 
schools, the settlements, and other places hav- 
ing evening classes. 



IV 

The Adult Worker. 

TN an introductory chapter I have referred to 
-** that isolation of the relatively well-to-do 
which is brought about by the multiplication of 
mechanical contrivances. We shop by telephone 
and by mail; we consume at one end of the 
trolley line and railway track the commodities 
made at the other; and the details of the pro- 
cesses of manufacture and of after-handling 
are hidden away from our sight and knowledge. 
But it is in this very part of our daily lives, in 
the way that we buy and consume both necessi- 
ties and luxuries, that we still influence most 
vitally the lives of large numbers of our neigh- 
bors. We have no contact, with them, we do 
not recognize them when we pass them on the 
street, and yet, for good or for evil, we are 
shaping their lives every day by our choice 
of goods. 

Some cheerful philosophers pretend to be- 
lieve that this influence is always and inevi- 
54 



The Adult Worker 55 

tably good, that by lavish expenditure — the 
more lavish the better — we "make work for 
the poor." 

The Bradley-Martin ball used to be one of 
the favorite illustrations of this form of auto- 
matic beneficence. It was assumed that, if 
not spent on the ball, the money would have 
been hidden away in the Bradley-Martin 
stocking; that it could not have been invested 
in any industry which, beside giving work, pro- 
duced useful things. 

The fact that immediately concerns us, how- 
ever, is that lavish expenditure is usually ca- 
pricious expenditure. What the Bradley-Mar- 
tins had at their ball by way of favors and 
decorations and a hundred other things were, 
I imagine, unique, or why all the noise about 
them ? But nothing so demoralizes industry 
as caprice in buying. Our buying may be on a 
large scale or a small, but it must have purpose 
and thought and continuity, or else we rouse 
hopes that we can never satisfy, we increase 
the uncertainties of employment, we call a 
particular form of skill into being only to leave 
it in disuse. 



56 The Good Neighbor 

And a taste for cheapness is equally disas- 
trous. Says Bernard Bosanquet, 

If we will have nasty things, shoddy things, 
vulgar things, ugly things, we are condemning 
somebody to make them. If we will have im- 
possibly cheap things, we are condemning some- 
body to work without proper pay. 

There are legitimate bargains, of course. 
The department stores are teaching us to be- 
come more intelligent consumers by offering 
goods out of the rush season at reduced prices. 
This is only one way, but a good way as far 
as it goes, of helping us to realize the advan- 
tages to both maker and buyer of planning 
ahead. It contributes toward the greatest 
single benefit that could be conferred upon 
those who toil; namely, the equalization of 
their work and wages throughout the year. 

The demoralization of uncertain income 
when that income is very small, the tempta- 
tions of many weeks of idleness followed by 
weeks of work at high pressure during long 
Jiours — we have little realization of what these 



The Adult Worker 57 

things mean in loss of health, temperance 
morality and thrift, unless we have known the 
home life of the intermittent worker. 

Occupations dependent upon the weather, 
such as digging, teaming and water-front 
laboring, are illustrations of what is meant. 
In the building trades a wiser arrangement of 
outdoor and indoor tasks has reduced the length 
of the dull season very considerably. The 
clothing trade is, at present, the extremest 
instance of bad organization. An investigation 
made among the garment workers of Philadel- 
phia in 1903 showed that "on an average there 
are thirty-one weeks throughout the year when 
coat and trouser makers are idle, and there are 
thirty idle weeks for the vest makers. " 

Employers with a neighborly spirit can do as 
much as the consumer to make the lives of 
workers more endurable, and they owe a special 
duty to those who are unprotected by trade 
organizations and trade agreements. They can 
provide sanitary workshops and safety devices 
to guard the life and limb of the worker; they 
can take a proper pride in doing more than the 
law requires instead of less; but in no way can 



58 The Good Neighbor 

they do a greater service than in devising ways, 
by every possible combination of tasks, to 
equalize work throughout the year. The super- 
intendent of a gas company, wishing to give the 
fitters steady work, advertised to sell gas stoves 
to be paid for during the following summer, 
on condition that they were to be put in place 
at the company's convenience. We are only 
beginning to realize the thousands of ways in 
which such forethought could be made of bene- 
fit to the consumer, to the manufacturer, and, 
above all, to the worker. 

Each one can help. This is the burden of 
every chapter in this book, but it is peculiarly 
true here. We are all employers, and life would 
not be overstrained but cheered and enriched 
if we could contrive to put more brains and 
heart into our purchase of goods and of service. 
If we are going to need furniture-covers, it is 
unneighborly to wait until everyone needs them 
before we try to have them made. If our trunks 
are out of repair, why not send them to be 
mended just after we return to town, and give 
the workmen ample time, instead of waiting 
until just before we leave again and telephoning 



The Adult Worker 59 

excitedly that we must have them at once ? 
Illustrations could be multiplied indefinitely. 
Planning ahead, sending work back to the home 
laundress when we are away, saving work that 
can wait for the dull season, realizing that each 
life which we touch is a life apart and not merely 
a convenient appendage to our own — such a 
daily habit brings its own reward in a more 
equable temper and in happier human relations. 
But rewards are beside the mark; all who 
work for us are our neighbors. The priest and 
the Levite were respectable citizens certainly, 
and busy ones probably, but — they passed by 
on the other side. That we may avoid doing 
likewise through any blindness to the plight of 
our neighbors who toil, the Consumers' League 
comes to our assistance. Its suggestions are 
very simple. It asks us to 

Do no shopping after five o'clock. 

Do no shopping on Saturday afternoons and 
during the week before Christmas. 

Receive no packages delivered after six o' clock 
without protest to the management. 

Deal with Fair Houses giving a ten-hour day ; 



60 The Good Neighbor 

a weekly half-holiday during two summer months ; 
at least one week' s vacation with pay in summer ; 
compensation for overtime ; lunch and toilet rooms 
apart from work-room and from each other ; seats 
for employees and employees permitted to use 
them ; weekly payment of wages ; terms of em- 
ployment such as to enable employee to lead a 
self-respecting and moral life ; obedience to the 
laws of the State. The League furnishes lists 
of such houses for various localities. 

Ask for underwear made under sanitary condi- 
tions and without child labor or sweatshop labor. 
The League grants the use of its label to manu- 
facturers meeting these conditions. 

One of the objections to the sweating system 
is found in the inability of human beings to 
compete successfully, by hand or foot power, 
with steam power. Work that can be done 
and is done equally well by machines cannot be 
done by men, and still less by women, without 
a physical strain that steadily reduces their 
earning power. When, therefore, work is 
"farmed out" by manufacturers to be done in 
tenement shops or in the homes of the workers, 
the hours are necessarily long and the pay small. 



The AdCtlt Worker 6i 

The spread of disease by this method of manu- 
facture is a strong argument against it, but the 
inevitable effect upon the worker, removed as 
he is from the protection of the factory laws 
and from the immediate oversight of his em- 
ployer, is a still stronger one. 

A Philadelphia member of the Consumers' 
League contracted diphtheria from a visit to a 
room in which a woman was finishing children's 
flannel dresses by the bedside of a child who died 
later of the disease. Into how many houses these 
little dresses carried the germs of contagion is un- 
known, but the incident is mentioned here because 
the woman's earnings were, at the time, 35 cents 
for a thirteen-hour day. 

Before her child was taken ill, she was be- 
sought by a neighboring settlement to leave the 
child at the day nursery, and take up factory 
work ; but home work seemed readier at hand 
and she refused. After the child's death, she 
did enter a textile mill, and is now earning $7 a 
week for Rve and a half days' work.* 



* This does not mean that widows with children should always be 
urged to enter factories, but that the home industry, if one be 
found, should not be factory work. 



62 The Good Neighbor 

Relief funds cannot be administered wisely 
without keeping industrial questions continu- 
ally in mind. Through ignorance of them it 
is possible for charity to make grievous blun- 
ders. If a man with four children can earn only 
$6 a week as an unskilled laborer in a large 
city where rentals and other living expenses 
are high, it is surely better, instead of merely 
supplementing this income, to spend money 
and time in seeking for him a new field where 
his labor is in greater demand and where liv- 
ing expenses are cheaper. A woman works 
hard and earns $3 a week. Should charity 
supplement this amount, in order to make it 
possible for her to live, or should it use every 
resource at its command to secure for her better 
paying work, in case she is fitted to do it; or, 
in case she is not, to train her for better work, 
and support her entirely during the period of 
training ? The latter is the better course, not 
only for her sake but for the sake of all indepen- 
dent workers with whom, at a $3 wage, she is 
coming in competition. 

The entrance of many women into wage- 
earning occupations is one of the natural re- 



The Adult Worker 63 

suits of the abandonment of home industries 
to which reference has been made in the chap- 
ter on the Child in the City. For reasons that 
affect the physical and moral future of our 
race, that entrance must be safeguarded by 
special regulation as to hours. The interna- 
tional treaty signed at Berne last year pro- 
hibiting night work for women employed in 
factories and workshops, places fourteen Euro- 
pean nations ahead of the United States in 
their care of the health and welfare of mothers. 
If, as some claim, the regulation of women's 
hours of employment by statute would be 
unconstitutional in this country, it would be a 
very patriotic thing to amend the constitution 
to meet a condition undreamed of when it was 
framed. 

There is one other industrial handicap that 
the good neighbor must never forget — the handi- 
cap of race and national prejudice. The par- 
able of the Samaritan is so supremely signifi- 
cant just because the rescued man was a Jew 
and his rescuer was of an alien people. The 
group that surrounded Teacher and questioner 
on the day that this tale was first told felt with 



64 The Good Neighbor 

all the intensity of their pride of race the dra- 
matic contrast, but too often we miss it alto- 
gether and the meaning of the parable beside, 
interpreting it quite comfortably to teach us 
that we must be kind to one another even at 
some personal inconvenience. 

A charity that publishes appeals for indi- 
vidual families in the daily papers (without 
names, of course) has discovered that appeals 
for money to pension a German or an American 
widow with children meet a ready response, 
but that an appeal for an Italian widow usually 
brings no money whatever. The latest immi- 
grant group, and the one condemned to do the 
heaviest and poorest paid work, is usually the 
one against which, unconsciously, we allow 
ourselves to take this antagonistic attitude. 
Quite apart from our opinion as to the wisdom 
or unwisdom of the immigration laws, we owe 
a neighborly duty to those whom we have 
allowed to enter. 

Around industrial questions and their solu- 
tion the social unrest of our time seems to center. 
Unneighborliness on both sides has been the 
rule rather than the exception, and still I touch 



The Adult Worker 65 

upon the subject only in so far as it concerns 
the handicapped. The topic has no limitations, 
but the book and its author have very definite 
ones, making any adequate treatment in this 
place of the relation of employer and employee 
impossible. 



V 

The Tenant. 

TN one of Miss Edgeworth's incomparable 
"** tales of Irish life, the hero returns after many 
years' absence to his own country, and, in a 
fit of generosity, builds a new cottage for his 
old nurse. But she is far from happy in her 
model quarters. Missing the smoke to which 
she has been accustomed, she finds the place 
cold; partitions are soon torn down for firing, 
and "the whole is transformed into a scene of 
dirt, rubbish and confusion." 

The moral might be drawn from this that 
the Earl of Glenthorn had been too kind; that 
improved housing for ignorant tenants is always 
foredoomed to failure. But a truer moral is 
based on the Earl's many years of absentee 
landlordism. As he had pursued his own 
pleasures in London, he had been oblivious for 
so long a time to the real condition of his ten- 
antry that his kindness had come too late. 

Absenteeism is not the only cause of bad hous- 
66 



The Tenant 67 

ing conditions. The thrifty foreigner is a newer 
type of landlord who often puts his savings 
into a house which he sublets, living himself 
in two or three of its rooms, and greedily exact- 
ing for the rest the highest possible rentals 
for the fewest possible conveniences. But this 
is the landlord with a low standard of living. 
The landlord with a higher standard, who used 
to collect his own rents or, at least, personally 
superintend the repairs, was rarely a hard man. 
Contact had developed his neighborly side. 

It is generally supposed that New York is 
the only city with a tenement house problem. 
Under the accepted definition of a tenement 
house this is not true, though it is true that New 
York is the only city in this country that has a 
majority of its total population in houses 
erected for a number of families each, houses of 
the six-story, narrow-airshaft variety; and in 
this regard her housing conditions are peculiar. 

I shall not attempt to tell here the story that 
has been told many times before of her deter- 
mined fight for better conditions; of the suc- 
cessful campaign, beginning in a committee of 
the New York Charity Organization Society, 



68 The Good Neighbor 

continuing through a State-appointed commis- 
sion, through the creation, later, of a new 
tenement house department with wide powers, 
and still carried on to-day through the active 
interest of many friends of the poor in the 
work of that department. I turn instead to 
the cities in which it is confidently asserted that 
there are no tenements, that "this is a city of 
homes. " The reports of housing investigations 
in two such places lie before me as I write. 
They are filled with reproductions from photo- 
graphs of the most revolting conditions. 

What is a tenement ? It is a house occupied 
by three or more families living independently 
of each other and doing their cooking on the 
premises. In nearly all large cities said to be 
free from the evils of bad housing there are 
thousands of these houses, built for one family 
and occupied by three or more. 

Conspicuously bad features often found in these 
dwellings are inadequate water supply and sani- 
tary accommodations ; broken and defective 
plumbing ; surface drainage ; wet cellars ; yards 
piled with rubbish ; live stock kept within the 



The Tenant 69 

houses ; overcrowding of sleeping rooms ; lack 
of privacy ; no proper provision for the disposal 
of garbage ; and insufficient light and air due to 
the erection of a second building on the same lot. 



Another problem of such cities is the alley 
house. One long double row of alley houses pre- 
senting a rather homelike aspect in the report 
(little houses, however unwholesome, are apt to 
do this in pictures) is said by the Board of Health 
to have had at least one case of tuberculosis in 
each house, and, during the year 1906, eight 
deaths from tuberculosis had occurred in fam- 
ilies there that were known to the Federated 
Charities. 

Why, it may be asked, do tenants endure such 
conditions ? The reasons are many. Migration 
to cities creates a great demand for living 
quarters that are convenient to work and, in 
the case of foreigners, near one's compatriots. 
The increased demand for tenements sends up 
rentals and makes it easy for real estate agents 
to dismiss tenants who demand repairs or report 
nuisances. Accordingly, the patient or indif- 
ferent tenant stays and conditions deteriorate. 



;o The Good Neighbor 

But always, as a contributing cause, we have 
the modern habit of loss of contact, and the 
administration of properties by middlemen. 



A modern charity organized on the district 
plan became aware of some of the inconveniences 
of delegated ownership when it took charge, in a 
poor neighborhood, of a district office that had 
been in other charitable hands. The society's 
paid visitor was sickened by the foul odors of the 
place, an old vault was found to be leaking into 
a cellar at the rear, and the cellars of the rear 
houses were flooded by each rainstorm. Exami- 
nation of the city plan showed that the street had 
never been underdrained. After some months 
of unremitting effort this was accomplished. 
Whereupon the real estate agent ordered the 
charity to vacate the premises, saying that it had 
caused him more trouble and expense in six 
months than the former tenant had caused in six- 
teen years. This was quite true, but the tenants 
in the rear houses were very grateful for dry 
cellars and sweeter air, even at a slightly advanced 
rental ; and when an appeal was made from the 
real estate agent to the lawyer who hired him 
and who was, in turn, hired by the owner, the 



The Tenant 71 

society was permitted to remain. It took time 
and influence to accomplish this improvement ; 
the charitable society's neighbors had neither. 



Administration by middlemen will continue, 
of course, but owners, in the last analysis, are 
responsible for any injustice or lack of consid- 
eration of which their agents may be guilty, 
and to the owners of property all who love 
their fellow men have a right to turn for redress, 
when housing conditions become intolerable. 

What is the very least that a landlord who is 
also a good neighbor should know about his 
properties in poor neighborhoods ? First of all, 
he should have seen them with his own eyes. 
Many estates are administered by trust com- 
panies who employ local real estate agents for 
the poorer properties. Often the owner does 
not know what he owns nor where. The very 
least that one who receives income from a house 
inhabited by poor tenants can do is to visit it, 
go all over it and assure himself personally that 
no part of his prosperity rests upon the insecure 
foundation of conditions dangerous to health 
and life itself. 



72 The Good Neighbor 

The landlord without much experience of 
housing conditions who makes such a visit of 
inspection will sometimes be deceived by the 
effects of paint and whitewash. These change 
the superficial aspects of a property, but they 
do not cure its fundamental structural and 
sanitary defects. "It is not unusual," writes a 
correspondent who has been interested in hous- 
ing reforms, "to hear visitors condemn in un- 
qualified terms houses which are in very fair 
structural and sanitary condition, but which 
may, at the time of their visit, have lacked paint 
or had cluttered yards or dirty rooms." The 
important things to look for on a first visit are 
insecure foundations, dangerous or dark stairs 
and hallways, leaky and insecure roofs and 
walls, wet cellars, defective plumbing, inade- 
quate water supply, dark rooms and over- 
crowded sleeping apartments. The minimum 
standard of cubic air space for each adult sleeper 
is 400 cubic feet. 

This inspection might well be preceded by an 
examination of the local building laws, and 
the visit itself should make clear whether their 
provisions are being obeyed. 



The Tenant 73 

For the landlord who is moved, by this per- 
sonal contact with bad conditions, to seek 
remedies, the following more detailed sugges- 
tions about tenements, compiled after corre- 
spondence with several housing experts, may be 
found useful. I am indebted to Mrs. Alice 
Lincoln of Boston, to Mr. Lawrence Veiller 
and Miss Emily W. Dinwiddie of New York, 
and to Mr. Wallace Hatch formerly of Wash- 
ington and now of Philadelphia, for the great 
pains with which they have answered my ques- 
tions, though they must not be held respon- 
sible for the result as here given: 

1 . Cellar clean and free from rubbish. Where 
soil is contaminated from leakage of privy vaults, 
defective house drains or any other cause, a con- 
crete floor is needed. The main pipe carrying 
waste to the street sewer should be trapped and 
provided with hand-holes for cleaning purposes. 
An unobstructed house drain and a sanitary, well- 
ventilated cellar are of the first importance because 
the cellar air is drawn up through the house. 

2. Plumbing, The owner should ascertain 
whether a sewer runs through the street and 
whether the house drain is properly connected 



74 The Good Neighbor 

with it. There should be running water on 
every landing and, if possible, in every apart- 
ment. There should be at least one water-closet 
for every two families, and these closets should 
be kept locked. Cleanly tenants often suffer un- 
justly from the filthy habits of others. The in- 
terior plumbing should be tested, and the repairs 
should be made by a competent plumber. 

3. Halls and Rooms, If the stairs are dark, 
an effort should be made to light them by means 
of glass panels in doors or windows, by transoms 
over doors, or by a skylight. Every living room 
should be light throughout and adequately venti- 
lated from the outside air. 

4. Roof \ Tardy etc. Roof clean and free from 
leaks. There should be a sufficient yard, free 
from rubbish, in which to dry clothes. If no 
yard can be provided, the roof should be made 
available for this purpose. Cans for ashes and 
garbage should be furnished. Separate bins for 
each family should be provided in the cellar, 
large enough to hold at least half a ton of coal. 
The legal provisions for protection against fire 
and for escape from fire should be carefully 
observed. 

5. Occupancy. Conditions of immorality, 
overcrowding and dirt among present tenants 



The Tenant 75 

should be ascertained. Those who remain stub- 
bornly incorrigible should be removed. The 
practice of subletting should be strictly prohibited. 
The presence of animals on the premises, other 
than dogs, cats and small pets, should not be 
permitted. 



It may be objected that, though attention to 
details such as these are well enough when 
tenants are cleanly, they are worse than wasted 
on tenants of the type of the Earl's nurse, who 
are by preference careless and untidy. But the 
experience of volunteer rent collectors who have 
w T orked systematically to change living condi- 
tions proves that even here a little patience 
and skill can accomplish wonders. 

Forty-three years ago this plan of collect- 
ing was begun in London by Miss Octavia Hill 
in the management of certain bad tenement 
properties in a rough Marylebone court. It is 
pleasant to associate with this first venture in 
philanthropic rent collecting the name of Ruskin, 
who furnished the capital for an undertaking that 
has gradually come to have such far-reaching 
and beneficent consequences. "I find it easy 



76 The Good Neighbor 

enough to raise the house/' said Miss Hill to an 
American visitor, " but if you raise it too rap- 
idly the tenants fall out through the bottom." 
Her plan, in brief, has been to exact regular 
payments and to collect rentals weekly through 
a volunteer rent collector who becomes well- 
acquainted with the tenants and slowly but 
steadily uses her influence to secure their co- 
operation in all improvements. Writing of the 
management of her first London court, Miss 
Hill says, 

I had been informed that the honest habitually 
pay for the dishonest, the owner relying upon 
their payments to compensate for all losses : but 
I was amazed to find to what extent this was the 
case. Six, seven or eight weeks' rent was due 
from most tenants, and in some cases very much 
more ; whereas, since I took possession of the 
houses (of which I collect the rents each week 
myself) I have never allowed a second week's 
rent to become due. . . . 

As soon as I entered into possession each family 
had an opportunity of doing better : Those who 
would not pay, or who led clearly immoral lives, 
were ejected. The rooms they vacated were 



The Tenant 77 

cleansed, the tenants who showed signs of im- 
provement were moved into them, and thus, in 
turn, an opportunity was obtained for having each 
room distempered and painted. 

And writing thirty -three years later, after this 
plan had been tried in many London neighbor- 
hoods, in other parts of Great Britain, and in this 
country, Miss Hill says of the volunteers working 
under her direction: We have tried, so far as 
possible, to enlist ladies who would have an idea 
of how, by diligent attention to all business which 
devolves upon a landlord, by wise rule with re- 
gard to all duties which a tenant should fulfil, by 
sympathetic and just decisions with a view to the 
common good, a high standard of management 
could be attained. Repairs promptly and effici* 
ently attended to, references carefully taken up, 
cleaning sedulously supervised, overcrowding put 
an end to, the blessing of ready money payments 
enforced, accounts strictly kept, and, above all, 
tenants so sorted as to be helpful to one another. 
These and many other duties devolve on a lady 
who manages houses as distinguished from an 
ordinary district visitor. 

Americans who have studied under Miss Hill 
have introduced her plan of managing tenement 



yS The Good Neighbor 

properties into the United States. The Octavia 
Hill Association of Philadelphia was started in 
this way. There are also, working on another 
plan, associations for building model tene- 
ments, like the City and Suburban Homes 
Company in New York. And crusades for 
improved housing regulation have been or- 
ganized in some cities by the charity organiza- 
tion society, in others independently. The chief 
sources of local information about housing are 
the board of health, the committees or associa- 
tions formed to secure housing reforms, and 
the philanthropic building companies. 



VI 

The Man on the Street. 

TT7"E have seen that "thy neighbor is thy 
" ifellowman when thou and he are near," 

whether this nearness be geographical, social, 
industrial, economic or civic, and that no 
strained interpretation of the parable of the 
Good Samaritan is necessary to make this 
clear. But the most obvious application of the 
words of the Master and the one with which 
we are most familiar is to the relief of physical 
distress. 

One often hears charitable people say that 
they would rather help ninety-nine unworthy 
than let one worthy man go unhelped, and they 
think that they are quoting the Scriptures 
when they say this. But it was one that 
was lost in the parable of the sheep and not 
ninety and nine at all. Nowhere in the 
Bible is this division of those who claim to be in 
distress into " worthy" and " unworthy" ever 
made, and the division itself has no practical 
79 



8o The Good Neighbor 

value, One of the hardest crosses that a worker 
in a charity organization society has to bear is 
the popular impression that all his efforts to 
secure more adequate and intelligent care for 
the needy are only so many clever devices for 
protecting the tenderhearted from imposition 
by discriminating for them between the " de- 
serving" and the "undeserving." It is true 
that discrimination is necessary, but for quite 
another purpose. We are all deserving of some- 
thing and all undeserving of something else; 
and when we are in trouble, from the least to 
the greatest of us, or even only think that we 
are, the one practical thing is to discover what 
will get us out and keep us out. 

What is the truth about giving ? It has never 
been expressed better than by Phillips Brooks, 
who says, 

I want to give the poor man what is mine. 
It is my duty and my wish to give. What shall 
I give him ? If I have got no further into the 
idea of property than the first stage, I am satis- 
fied when I have filled his empty hands with 
dollars. But if I have gone further than that, 
I cannot be content till I have bestowed on him 



The Man on the Street 8i 

by personal care something of that which dollars 
represent to me, and without which they would be 
valueless, the noble and ennobling circumstances 
which civilization has gathered round my lot. 
But if I have gone deeper still and learned to 
count truth the one precious thing in all the 
world, I shall feel that I have "spared to think 
of my own" to give him, till I have at least 
tried to provide not merely for the body but for 
the mind. And then, to take once more the 
final step, as soon as I have come to think of 
character as the one only thing that I can really 
call my own, my conscience will not let me rest, 
I shall think all my benefaction an imperfect, 
crippled thing until I have touched the springs 
of character in him and made him a sharer of 
that which it is the purpose and joy of my life 
to try to be. 

Here we have the progressive stages of giv- 
ing: (i) Money or its equivalents, (2) more 
ennobling circumstances, (3) character. 
" Sometimes," writes the great preacher in 
another place, "the higher gift may be so di- 
rectly given that the type is needless. Some- 
times the modern benefactor may say like Peter 
at the temple gate, ' Silver and gold have I none, 
6 



82 The Good Neighbor 

but in the name of Jesus rise and walk/ 
Often, however, the money help is needed, and 
how can the busy men and women to whom 
this book is addressed, how can they, occupied 
with many other duties, be persuaded that the 
money help which is given without providing 
at the same time for better circumstances and 
better contacts, hinders its recipients cruelly ? 

Less than one-tenth, probably, of those who 
need our charitable consideration are beggars 
or vagrants, but this class is ten times as much 
in evidence as all the others and receives, there- 
fore, ten times as much attention of a mistaken 
and demoralizing but well-meant sort from the 
charitable public. It is to the homeless, there- 
fore, that one naturally turns in considering the 
treatment of distress. 

What of the man who has slipped from 
under, who leads a vagrant life and no longer 
claims a neighborhood or neighbors or the 
privileges of neighborliness ? Some will see in 
him the expression of that rebel side of us 
which longs to be off with the gypsies. Some 
will recognize and sympathize with that gaming 
instinct which prompts him to find in the very 



The Man on the Street 83 

uncertainties of the road its chief attraction — 
a run of bad luck to-day, a golden harvest to- 
morrow, all won, every cent of it, by a skil- 
fully played game. Some will see in him the 
victim of a clumsy and mistaken industrial 
order. Some will welcome him, be the cause of 
his outstretched palm what it may, as a con- 
venient object for the development of their own 
charitable impulses. And some, though their 
number is not yet many, will long to know the 
whole truth about him — the complex, baffling, 
difficult truth — in order that they may no longer 
unwittingly help to manufacture his kind, and 
in order too that they may w^in him away from 
his poor, mistaken, unneighborly, anti-social self. 
The vagrant needs more help, more sym- 
pathy, more thought and care than he now 
receives; and I feel that it would be almost 
a crime to discourage the giving of small change 
on the street, at the house-door and back gate, 
or in the business office, to this class, unless 
at the same time givers were shown a better 
way of helping. The way has been pointed 
out in its progressive stages, (1) money or its 
equivalents, (2) more ennobling circumstances, 



84 The Good Neighbor 

(3) character. Money and nothing more sends 
him back into the vicious circle of his present 
life, among circumstances that are less and less 
ennobling, that are made more actively degrad- 
ing, indeed, by our alms. 

"The two conditions of human happiness/' 
says Charles Booth, "are work and affection. 
And these conditions are best fulfilled when 
a man works hard for those he loves." This 
points the way of reform for the vagrant. We 
do any man, rich or poor, a great wrong, when 
we help to make it possible for him to live with- 
out human ties and without occupation. Upon 
the provision of work immediately, and upon 
the restoration of home ties whenever possible, 
all effective aid for the man on the street must 
be founded. 

But the man on the street applies to thou- 
sands, and hundreds of these have some impulse 
to help him. How can each give him the equiv- 
alent of money in work, plus more ennobling 
circumstances, plus character ? To do this 
ourselves for all who apply obviously is impos- 
sible. It is far easier to undo what some one 



The Man on the Street 85 

else is already striving to do by giving what is 
asked for instead of what is needed. 

To avoid this endless duplication and also to 
provide work and better surroundings promptly 
for each applicant, a modern institution comes 
to our rescue as effectively as the inn came to 
the rescue of the rescuing Samaritan. The 
wayfarers' lodges or municipal lodging-houses 
that are provided in some places have become 
our best modern substitute for the innkeeper, 
though they are most useful in dealing promptly 
with an appeal for help and serve only as a first 
step in effective relief. Every householder and 
every business house should be provided with 
free tickets to these shelters, and no such place 
should be used unless there is a work-test of 
some sort attached to it, so that wayfarers 
may at once come under the wholesome influ- 
ence of employment. This work should be such 
as can be easily adapted to varying physical 
capacities. We should further assure our- 
selves that the work-shelters are kept at a high 
standard of cleanliness and sanitation. A bath 
should be compulsory, and there should be 
proper provision for the destruction of vermin 



86 The Good Neighbor 

and the fumigation of clothing. The food pro- 
vided should be plain, plentiful and good of its 
kind. These inns for wounded travellers are 
sometimes so carelessly managed, so uncleanly, 
that the victim arrives with one disease and 
leaves with another; and it is unfortunately 
true that those proclaiming their successorship 
to the Samaritan the loudest are often the worst 
offenders. It is neighborly to assure ourselves 
by personal visit, if necessary, of the kind of 
care provided, and then to use the selected 
shelter systematically in helping homeless men 
or women. 

A good shelter is not only cleanly and pro- 
vided with an adequate work-test for all comers; 
we should also expect it to inquire into the par- 
ticular problems and needs of each inmate, in 
order to seek a way of throwing around him the 
"more ennobling circumstances" of regular work 
and renewed human ties. Work in the labor 
market, which is always better than temporary 
and ' ( made ' ' work, should be sought for the 
able-bodied and for the handicapped who are not 
too crippled or infirm to do special work adapted 
to their capacities. Younger men should be 



The Man on the Street 87 

brought in touch once again with their own peo- 
ple. The aged often have relatives able to care 
for them, and these should be sought out. The 
diseased should receive prompt and adequate 
medical care. 

And all of this programme, leading up at last 
to the supreme gift of character, needs at every 
turn our neighborly help. Institutions for the 
homeless are relatively inefficient unless they 
have learned to interest young men in the 
churches, in individual inmates whose greatest 
need is to be sure that some one else cares; 
unless also they are able to interest business 
men who can "lend their brains out" in the 
search for industrial chances. And for every 
household there is some natural and easy way 
of helping. Some can buy the product of the 
institution's labor or woodyard, some can fur- 
nish clothing to aid in a plan of helping a 
man upward, some can give odd jobs. No one 
need feel that the old impulse of helpfulness 
has been checked or chilled by this adjust- 
ment to modern needs. 

The charitable impulses of the servants of 
die household should also be carried over into 



88 The Good Neighbor 

the new plans. A director of a model institu- 
tion for wayfarers was sadly bewildered when 
he discovered that one of his own housemaids 
was feeding all comers at his back gate. One 
institution for which he was responsible, namely, 
his home, was defeating the object of another 
institution to which he was giving much time 
and thought. But maids are human: they will 
not be converted by the maxims of political 
economy nor by the simple word of command. 
The positive side of the new policy must be 
carefully explained to them and then patiently 
illustrated. One householder always explains 
to her maid the result of each application for 
help received at the door. "You'll never get to 
Heaven by giving away your mistress's things," 
said a clear-sighted priest to his servant-girl 
congregation. The truth was so pithily put that 
it stuck. The truly neighborly household will 
cultivate in its servants good habits of neigh- 
borly service. 

It has been said that a few of those who are 
striving to aid the homeless not only long to 
know the whole truth about them as the best 



The Man on the Street 89 

way of getting them out of their troubles, but 
also crave this knowledge in order that they may 
discover ways in which our modern communities 
may avoid the manufacture of an increasing 
army of vagrants, tramps and beggars. This 
is not the place in which to dwell upon the 
larger preventive and repressive measures that 
must be advanced side by side with the educa- 
tion of householders in their contact with the 
homeless; but, as the householder can influence 
the policy of police departments and State legis- 
latures, here are a few of the suggestions made 
in a recent study of "Vagrancy" by Orlando F. 
Lewis of the Joint Application Bureau, New 
York, which should be borne in mind. The 
police will show more intelligent interest in the 
enforcement of the laws against begging when 
they find that citizens are intelligently interested. 

(rf) Vagrants trespassing on railroads should be 
arrested and imprisoned at hard labor, and the 
press, the police, and the magistrates should push 
to secure prompt enforcement of the laws against 
trespass. 

(^) In cities troubled with beggars there should 
be at least one special mendicancy officer in plain 



90 The Good Neighbor 

clothes, and arrests should be followed by the 
prompt punishment of habitual offenders . 

(7) Lodging-houses maintained by charitable 
bodies should be models of their kind. Missions 
giving food or lodging to the destitute should re- 
quire a reasonable amount of work in return. The 
mission's function is spiritual regeneration. Any 
method that renders a large proportion of the re- 
cipients hypocritical or slothful is obviously wrong. 

(V) At least one compulsory labor colony for 
habitual vagrants, with indeterminate sentence, 
and one hospital for inebriates, should be estab- 
lished in each State. 

Turning from the homeless to resident beg- 
gars, anyone applying at the door who can give 
a city address should be told that no help is 
ever given at the door, but that some one will 
visit promptly and try to help in the applicant's 
own home. The name and address should then 
be telephoned or written to the charity organi- 
zation society or associated charities, together 
with any details that have been gathered from 
the applicant. The society will visit within 
twenty-four hours, if told that the need is urgent, 
and emergency distress will be relieved at once 
without waiting for any formality whatever. 



The Man on the Street 91 

Plans are then set on foot for the more adequate 
relief of the whole family by methods that are 
described in the next chapter. 

Three types of beggars may be mentioned 
here very briefly; namely, begging letter 
writers, deformed beggars and child beggars. 

Old stories that have served their turn with 
slight variation for generations are still the stock 
in trade of the beggar. Their very antiquity 
seems to give them a sanctity in the eyes of 
many. The begging letter writer has the dis- 
ease from which you have just recovered, or 
his youngest child is named after you, or he 
needs just so much (almost always the same 
sum) to put him beyond the need of charity 
forever, or a mutual friend has referred him to 
you, or he had a great admiration for a near 
relative of yours who has recently died, or he 
has dreamed you would help him, or a hundred 
other equally improbable things. If he can 
convince his correspondent that he has written 
to no one else, he is fortunate. But such com- 
munications should be carefully followed up 
and their writers helped on the basis of their 
real needs instead of their alleged needs. 



92 The Good Neighbor 

Of another class, less skilled but more suc- 
cessful in their appeals, the blind and crippled, 
it is necessary to speak frankly. Every human 
creature hides deformity by instinct. When we 
tempt the man with a withered hand to ex- 
hibit it in order to excite our sympathy, we 
degrade him, and it is quite true that we often 
find the deepest moral degradation among those 
beggars who are also physically deformed. 
Industrial homes for the blind testify that men 
leave these institutions to beg on the streets 
because they can make more money and have 
more free time for debauchery. "Blind beg- 
gars," writes the head of a large school for the 
blind, " are a real menace to the success of our 
work, for their existence renders the independ- 
ence of self-respecting blind people more diffi- 
cult to maintain." It is not enough to deny 
the blind our alms, we must push on to secure 
their better industrial training and to secure for 
them individual chances of employment,* but 
when we do not interest ourselves in this thor- 



* Those who are interested in the adult blind will find a valuable 
article on their industrial aid in Charities and the Commons, Vol. 
XVII, p. 405, sq. 



The Man on the Street 93 

ough way, we are too apt to hinder all who do 
by giving our small change at the door or on the 
street. An offer to double whatever he might 
earn and to train him to earn it was indig- 
nantly refused by one blind man known to me, 
and he still parades the streets with his wife, 
attracting crowds on the corners. 

Cripples are almost always employable unless 
their deformities are very unusual. One, who 
claimed never to have slept in the same place 
for more than two nights in succession in 
twenty years, has now earned his living and 
slept in the same place — a cleanly place — for 
months. The local charity organization so- 
ciety will usually try to find work for any cripple 
w T ho can be persuaded to accept it. 

It is difficult to speak without bitterness of 
the practice of giving money or goods to chil- 
dren who beg at the door or on the street. 
Behind every such appeal there are a hundred 
needs to be met, not one; and they are not met, 
they are only more successfully hidden, by the 
help of the moment. 

No charitable society that is worthy of the 
name seeks to substitute its machinery for 



94 The Good Neighbor 

personal charity. Charity cannot be too per- 
sonal, but, on the other hand, it must be co- 
operative and intelligent. "After I had come 
to avail myself of this society," said a New 
York clergyman, speaking of the New York 
Charity Organization Society, 

there came to me one of those cases "I 
knew all about" and it was not necessary for 
me to investigate it at all. When he came and 
asked me for ten dollars and a month or so later 
for five, in a dreadful emergency, and again and 
again for ten, I went on giving it, feeling that I 
was acting as a special providence to relieve 
genteel poverty; until, after a year or two, a 
missive came that somehow or other excited my 
suspicion, and I said, ** I will go to the office of 
the Charity Organization Society," and I went, 
half despising myself for suspecting these people 
I " knew all about." And after applying to one 
of the ladies in charge and putting her under 
bonds of secrecy, finally I said, "Will you tell 
me whether you have this name anywhere on 
your list ?" She vanished and in the course of 
a little time came in and brought me some letters 
— about half a peck, I should think — that were 
very nearly facsimiles of the one I had in my 



The Man on the Street 95 

hand, written by the same person ; and I never 
realized before what a circle I moved in. So 
after that I concluded I had better make some 
inquiries in reference to those cases I ' ' knew all 
about." 

The addresses of the wayfarers' lodge or 
municipal lodging-house, of the charity organi- 
zation society, and of the missions having a 
good work-test, will be needed in order to help 
applicants at the door effectively. In some 
cities homeless women are provided for at the 
lodges, and in others there is a shelter under 
other management for them. For the care of 
stubborn offenders, who are known to make 
false pretenses or to give false addresses, police 
headquarters should be called up. Many per- 
sons are discouraged from trying to get the 
names and addresses of resident beggars be- 
cause so often, when these are reported to the 
charity organization society, they prove to be 
false; but the practice should be continued, 
for the cumulative evidence thus gathered 
sometimes makes it possible for the society to 
stop the begging and help the beggar. It is 
not safe to assume that anyone in need, however 



96 The Good Neighbor 

well educated and respectable, is unknown to 
the society, which treats all classes and guards 
the confidence of its clients with great care. 
No visit will be paid by the society if requested 
not to visit, but it is always well to inquire 
whether applicants are registered at its central 
office. 



VII 

The Family in Distress. 

A WORKER in a large city charity that deals 
**■ - yearly with thousands of families in distress 
looks back with no small degree of envy upon 
the time when the place was simple and village- 
like. Deeds of charity were then relatively easy 
and natural, for the best way to help people 
is to know them before they need help, to know 
them as employees, neighbors, fellow church 
members and fellow citizens who have duties 
and pleasures in common with ourselves. 

But the village grew into a town, wealth and 
poverty grew with it, fu*>ds were created to 
take the place of the old irieighborhood help — 
soup funds, fuel funds, clothing funds— and 
these dole charities, relatively safe at first when 
the numbers were still small and conditions 
easily within the understanding of a few volun- 
teer dispensers, became veritable engines of 
destruction to the poor whom they were in- 
tended to help, when village changed from 
7 . 97 



98 The Good Neighbor 

town to city, and the city became a great magnet 
drawing many workers away from the country 
districts and away from overseas. Relief that 
keeps casual laborers in the city when there is 
no steady demand for their labor is not neigh- 
borly; relief that makes it possible for them to 
work for less and so underbid the man who 
asks no help is not neighborly; relief that en- 
courages a weak woman to leave her son's 
home and come down into the furnished room 
and saloon district on a long debauch is not 
neighborly; relief that helps a man to come 
and go at will as the whim seizes him with the 
assurance that his family will be cared for 
meanwhile is not neighborly. But often the 
funds that work this mischief were created 
before the days of sharp industrial competi- 
tion, before the days of the Tenderloin and of 
railroad vagrancy; and their trustees continue 
unchanged the methods of what may be called 
the "town period" of relief, they go on dis- 
tributing fuel and grocery orders during the 
winter months to applicants with whose real 
circumstances and real needs they have very 
slight acquaintance. 



The Family in Distress 99 

What is the remedy ? It is found in a return 
— laborious and awkward at first, it may be, 
but still a return — to the village ideal. To 
relieve distress the city must be broken up into 
workable districts, small enough to be known 
and understood thoroughly by charity workers 
selected for their devotion and intelligence. 
Whenever a case of family distress previously 
unknown comes to light, whether through an 
application to a church, a private residence 
miles away or a down-town business house, 
the matter should be reported at once to the 
district office in which the family lives; and the • 
citizen so reporting should be assured that a 
visit will be paid from that office to the home 
of the applicant within twenty-four hours with- 
out fail, that prompt measures will be taken 
to meet the immediate need, and that then 
without a moment's delay connection will be 
made with those who knew the family before 
they were in need. This may require visits 
widely scattered; it may require correspond- 
ence with San Francisco, or Georgia, or Maine; 
it may require careful planning on the part of 
a good many different people and the calling 



ioo The Good Neighbor 

in, for unbefriended cases, of a charitable 
stranger who will undertake to visit regularly 
and be neighborly (what is called a friendly 
visitor); but it is only the old-fashioned village 
ideal translated into modern terms and adapted 
to city conditions. 

In our efforts to deal thoroughly with applica- 
tions for help from strangers the use of an agency 
working on this plan involves no delay or suffer- 
ing. The society for organizing charity or charity 
organization society or associated charities, as it 
is variously called in different cities, may have 
developed somewhat different methods of work 
in different places, and in some the district system 
will have been better developed than in others, 
but everywhere such a society guarantees a prompt 
visit and adequate care. Emergency distress is 
relieved at once from the nearest grocery or coal 
bin without waiting to report to the inquirer, and 
then larger plans for help are developed in which 
those who referred the applicant will be asked to 
bear and usually will bear a part. 

That kodak charity which says in effect, 
"Subscribe to us and we'll protect you from 
the poor, we'll do the rest," is still working in 



The Family in Distress ioi 

the sordid "town period" of charitable develop- 
ment. It is anti-religious in the sense that it 
acts as one more barrier where there are al- 
ready too many between the well-to-do and the 
poor. The agency that seeks to divide chari- 
table burdens wisely, on the other hand, using 
each citizen's capacity for affection and neigh- 
borliness and using it to the best advantage, 
wins its way back at once to everything that 
was best in the old " village period" of relief. 

Such an agency will not attempt to replace 
the church in any way. Wherever church 
relations have been severed it will seek to 
restore them; wherever several churches of 
several denominations are working at cross 
purposes without knowing it, and dealing with 
the same family, it will seek to bring them 
together and secure either concerted action or 
a shifting of the burden to the right shoulders. 
And in all this it will avoid proselytizing. 

There are four indispensable features of the 
district system of aiding families. 

( I ) An efficient district superintendent or secre- 
tary, who gives his or her whole time to the work. 



102 The Good Neighbor 

(2) A live district committee or conference, 
meeting weekly and having in its membership 
those who are also actively connected with the 
church charities, the medical charities, and the 
other agencies dealing with family distress in the 
district. Such a conference, when well organ- 
ized, combines neighborly interest with a wide 
variety of community knowledge. It is willing to 
think hard about what ought to be done for A and 
B and C, and no problem that concerns a human 
being's welfare seems to it trifling or unimportant. 
The more kinds of people represented on such a 
committee, the more valuable its judgments become. 

(3) Volunteer or friendly visitors serving on 
the committee and also visiting individual families 
in which the committee's plans can only be 
carried out by continuous and friendly contact. 

(4) Closest relations between all these district 
workers and the central society, which should 
connect the neighborhood needs and the neighbor- 
hood points of view with the larger needs of the 
community, and then work persistently for the 
legislative and administrative reforms that are found 
in all this careful, detailed service to be practical. 

Such a society cannot prosper without a truly 
neighborly spirit among both its paid and volun- 



The Family in Distress 103 

teer workers. The older type of charity agent 
sat at a desk and divided the poor into the 
"worthy" and the "unworthy," giving the 
former small grocery orders and sending the 
latter about their business. The new type of 
worker, whether serving as a church or charity 
visitor, is sympathetic, ready and willing to 
work hard with the so-called undeserving; 
resourceful in cases where material relief alone 
is not enough; knowing like a book the district 
in which he or she works — its schools, its 
doctors, its clergymen, its industrial opportun- 
ities, its charitable people; and quick to use all 
of these in giving poor people a lift upward. 

Several years ago a school teacher applied 
to me for training looking to a district super- 
intendency. She was advised to write to an 
old college friend who was engaged in charity 
organization work in another city. The reply 
was so helpful that part of it is given here. 

.... About the work. I have found it most 
interesting and inspiring — a splendid opportunity 
for a useful, happy life, and a better opportunity 
to grow myself and to learn all sorts of valuable 
lessons. The work differs in different cities, so 



104 The Good Neighbor 

I cannot give you any specific advice about Phila- 
delphia ; I can only tell you about my own 

experience You must make up your 

mind before you go into the work that you can 
like or learn to like both rich and poor, and 
Catholic and Protestant, and Jew and Gentile, 
for you will have them all to deal with. You 
must be ready to work also with unpleasant and 
pleasant people, and, above all, your own faith 
in the beneficence of God's way in the world 
must be so strong that you will not easily be dis- 
couraged and bowed down with all the misery 
you will see. You must be able to see the good 
through it all. I do not want to frighten you — 
it is a strenuous life, but, at the same time, a 

wonderfully satisfying life In many ways 

it is broader than teaching can ever be, for we 
deal with all ages and classes, and all sorts of prob- 
lems, physical, spiritual and mental. 

This is a high standard of professional ser- 
vice, but it has been my privilege to know 
many who have lived up to it, and such pro- 
fessional charity agents inevitably attract around 
them volunteer workers of a very high grade. 

Some of these volunteers come as beginners, 
as friendly visitor? to two or three families, 



The Family in Distress 105 

feeling somewhat strange, at first, not sure of 
a welcome and shrinking a little from sights to 
which they are unaccustomed. But the late Pro- 
fessor Shaler has pointed out a very encouraging 
fact about human beings. He tells us that 

The revolt we feel at the sight of a man who 
is grievously wounded, or has any sore affliction 
which makes him appear abnormal, passes away 
as soon as we lay a helpful hand on his body. 
Something of this dissipation of the instinctive 
prejudice to the apparently inhuman nature of the 
neighbor will take place when a person of well- 
trained sympathies .... vigorously goes forth 
to the sufferer by an exercise of the will. 

Contact is indeed the cure for many wounds 
and for many prejudices, and one who has had 
the privilege for years of introducing friendly 
visitors to families at some time of crisis or 
especial distress can testify that in the perma- 
nent relation thus often established the healing 
and help are never all on one side. "If we could 
only make people realize," wrote a volunteer 
visitor recently in a letter, 

that the work of friendly visiting is so arranged 
that one can do a little and have one's efforts 



106 The Good Neighbor 

count, and that it offers an opportunity at our 
very doors to do something for someone else in 
the best possible way without interfering with 
any other interests one may have! 

One fine thing about doing such work in con- 
nection with a charity organization society is that 
the visitor starts out upon her relations with the 
family upon such a sure basis. I cannot think of 
an instance where anything but cordiality existed 
from the start. Then do you think that people 
realize what a field there is for purely friendly 
relations after the professional charity worker has 
done everything she possibly could ? You know 
of so many families where excellent work is done 
that I hate to take a minute to give a special 
instance, but no efforts, I am sure, except those 
of friends could have kept the B. family together. 
It took two of us, one in New York and one 
here, but the family is still together and doing 
well at last, even weathering a trip West after 
the possibility of a second desertion on the part 
of the father. 

It takes neither money nor worldly goods of 
any kind to become such a visitor, and people 
of very diverse social experience are able to do 
the work well. The next five extracts, for in- 



The Family in Distress 107 

stance, are taken in turn from the letters of 
friendly visitors, two of whom are married 
women, two spinsters, and one a widow. 

Perhaps it has not occurred to you how great 
an influence this "friendly visiting" work may 
have in the home of the visitor. For years we 
as a family have talked and planned concerning 
the families I have called upon, and besides get- 
ting us acquainted with the best methods of help- 
ing others it has had a broadening effect upon 
our own lives. My husband has been instru- 
mental in reclaiming the drunkard whom I have 
spoken of in this letter. 

I think one of the great helps of visiting is 
that it gives one a truer sense of proportion. 
This is especially true of mothers of young chil- 
dren who are apt to think the world revolves 
around their own individual child. My family 
consists of a widow and nine children, and it is 
very inspiring to me in coping with my four 
children to see how wonderfully the widow with 
every handicap manages her nine. 

The work is peculiarly fruitful to the childless 
person, for it brings love and the dependence of 
little ones into her life. 



io8 The Good Neighbor 

I am as proud of my little girls' progress in 
school as if they had been my own! While, 
when my friends moved into a better house 
where the sun really found them, and bought 
with their savings an $ i 8 set of furniture, I felt 
as if I had come into a fortune myself! Then, 
when my friend was ill, and all her poor, hard- 
worked neighbors gave of their scant time and 
means to help her, as many of my friends would 
not have done for me in like case — I realized 
more what real sympathy meant and learned 
another lesson. 

What have I gained by the work, and what has 
it meant to me, you ask ? It has broadened my 
whole life; it has given me work to do when a 
personal sorrow claimed my thoughts. And it 
has gained for me, I know, one very loyal friend 
among the poor. 

And these two must close citations that 
might be indefinitely extended from letters in 
my possession: 

I have done enough visiting, and for years 
enough, to have reaped the veteran's exceeding 
great reward. I have seen results, I have watched 
pauper-born children develop into good citizens. 

My chosen families are now in the third gen- 
eration and look after me. 



The Family in Distress 109 

Who could hope to develop any but the most 
artificial and unfruitful relations with a family, it 
may be asked, when the introduction is made 
through a society ? It is indeed deplorable 
that any families should be friendless, and that 
any visitors should be without natural oppor- 
tunities for making friends among the poor 
under conditions self-respecting for both; but 
an introduction through a district committee 
has the advantage that a good reason is al- 
ways found for the initial visits, that no one 
will be sent to families already overvisited, and 
that workers of more experience stand ready 
to advise and help. There is absolutely no 
"pushing in," and the friendliest, most attrac- 
tive relations are often formed. The best 
argument for such visiting is in the practical 
help to the visited, though the help is very 
far from being all on their side. 

" Why," said a judge to a woman who had 
just told her tale of long-endured abuse from a 
brutal husband, " why didn't you come to me 
before?" "Because," said the woman, turn- 
ing to her friendly visitor, " I never had a friend 
till now." An Italian is in the habit of bring- 



no The Good Neighbor 

ing to his visitor, who speaks his language, all his 
compatriots in distress, in the simple faith that 
there is no difficulty too great for her to solve. 

"Won't you go and see Mrs. ?" wrote a 

poor woman, removed to another city, to her 
former visitor. (i I have just heard that she has 
lost her husband, and you used to do me so much 
good when I was in trouble." And of this 
same visitor an elderly cripple said, €f It makes 
me feel better just to see her come in." 

This thorough, patient treatment of each 
individual case of distress, this bringing to it 
an open mind, an open heart, and a willingness 
to follow wherever the facts clearly lead, though 
they lead to the ends of the earth, develops 
many new and larger ways of helping. At first 
we think that we are dealing with a family 
in temporary distress; soon we discover that 
the distress is caused in part by bad sanitation, 
and still more by the community's neglect of 
the feeble-minded, of cripples, or of working 
children; we have picked up one end of a tan- 
gled skein and almost before we know it we are 
involved in a local or even a national campaign 
for the eradication of a whole group of pre- 



The Family in Distress hi 

veritable causes of distress. It is in this way 
that societies organized on the district plan for 
the more effective treatment of families in need 
have become the promoters of health crusades 
such as those for pure milk and against tuber- 
culosis, have been the pioneers in securing 
better tenement laws and better inspection, 
have worked hard for compulsory education 
and against child labor, and are thoroughly 
committed to the advancement of a number 
of other practical reforms growing directly out 
of their first-hand exnerience with distress and 
its causes. 

It may seem a far cry from this complex 
arrangement of district offices, district superin- 
tendents, district committees, friendly visitors, 
housing reform committees and sanitary com- 
mittees, to the simple story of the robbed 
traveller, the Samaritan, and the innkeeper. 
But, rightly understood, these changes are made 
necessary by our changed living conditions; 
results are still the same. The whole duty of 
the Samaritan could not be delegated, nor can 
ours. He touched the wounded man, minis- 
tered to him, was truly neighborly; and then, 



H2 The Good Neighbor 

where his own personal resources failed and his 
own personal affairs made renewed demands 
upon his time, he sought the co-operation of 
the innkeeper. The charity organization society 
is one of the modern innkeepers, and one of 
the most useful of them. 

The most important addresses in connection 
with this chapter are those of the central office 
of the charity organization society and of its 
nearest district office. A St. Vincent de Paul 
Society is usually organized in each Roman 
Catholic parish; there are societies for the 
relief of various nationalities, often a general 
relief society also, and a Hebrew relief society 
to which Jewish applicants should be referred. 



VIII 
The Invalid. 

/^NLY those who have been brought to very 
^^^ close quarters with distress realize how 
large a part is played by disease in the tragedy 
of the poor. There would be something heroic 
about the patience with which physical ill- 
being is accepted by them as the common lot 
if this were not a part of a larger fatalism. 
They have had no vision of health, no realizing 
sense of what a condition of well-being means. 
Every other cause of poverty in the long and 
dreary list brings sickness in its train. This 
would be an overwhelmingly depressing thought 
if the means of curing and preventing disease 
had not been multiplied a hundred-fold during 
the last fifty years. 

A passage in one of Dr. Osier's addresses 
quotes John Henry Newman as saying / "Who 
can weigh and measure the aggregate of pain 
which this one generation has endured from 
birth to death ? Then add to this all the pain 
8 113 



114 The Good Neighbor 

which has fallen and will fall upon our race 
through centuries to come." In sharp contrast 
to the mood of the great cardinal, the great 
doctor asks us to turn this about and consider 
how much pain has been prevented by the 
discoveries of medicine in the last fifty years. 
He even ventures to declare that the aggregate 
of pain which has been prevented outweighs in 
civilized communities that which has been suf- 
fered. This seems at first reading a too opti- 
mistic view, but when one considers the use of 
anaesthetics, the control of epidemics, the wonder- 
ful advances of aseptic surgery, and the begin- 
nings of effective sanitation, it is not the state- 
ment that seems so much at fault as one's own 
imagination, which cannot grasp the facts at 
first in all their cheering significance. 

Sin causes disease and will continue to cause 
it, but disease also causes sin, and in a world 
from which, through the heroism of many 
unheralded students, much of the preventable 
disease shall have been eradicated, spiritual 
forces will for the first time in this earth's 
history be able to do their work of healing in 
a free medium. 



The Invalid 115 

During the next fifty years, therefore, no 
aspect of neighborliness can be more important 
than that which seeks to improve the health 
of the people. One who would hasten the 
coming of Christ's Kingdom upon earth should 
strive to realize the many roads by which 
health, in its largest meaning, may be brought 
into the homes of the lowliest, and won at last 
to dwell there not fitfully but as an abiding 
blessing. "I am come," said the Master, "that 
they might have life and that they might have 
it more abundantly." That such life may flow 
abundantly over pain-racked nerves, trans- 
forming suffering into the gateway of Heaven, 
we have seen and know. But pain destroys 
more often than it quickens; the compassionate 
heart of the Good Samaritan knew this and 
hastened to bring oil and wine and the shelter 
of the inn to the wounded man. 

Between those simple means and the elabo- 
rate contrivances of modern surgery the art of 
healing has travelled a long way; but still, 
as one goes in and out of the courts and alleys, 
their inhabitants often seem as cut off from 
the means of succor as though they lay wounded 



n6 The Good Neighbor 

in the wilderness of Judea, for near as this means 
often is in the modern city their ignorance and 
ours still cuts them off. So little are available 
resources understood and turned to account 
that Samaritans are still sadly needed to make 
the connection. 

Everyone can help and that without going 
more than a few steps out of his way, by keep- 
ing at hand in this little book or elsewhere the 
few addresses that are needed to secure prompt 
succor for the sick. The dispensary, the hospital, 
the visiting nurse, the sick diet kitchen, the 
modified milk station, should all be within call 
when it falls to the lot of any one of us to make 
the connection, and where we are puzzled to 
find just the best fit in any given case there is 
always the charity organization society to help us. 

In so far as we have any influence with in- 
valids, we may use it to see that the earlier 
symptoms of illness are promptly heeded, that 
quack remedies and inefficient doctors are 
avoided, and that the sick do not return to work 
too soon. Our present medical resources are 
often quite adequate to effect a cure, but they 
are so unintelligently used that many times 



The Invalid 117 

they are wasted. Prompt use of the best re- 
sources may save weeks and years of ill-health. 
And when the hospital or dispensary has 
brought the patient to convalescence, we can- 
not do a more neighborly thing than to see that, 
instead of permitting him to return to work 
prematurely, his health is established by good 
convalescent care, preferably in the country. 
Two weeks' board on a farm or in a home for 
convalescents will make every difference in a 
working man's or woman's chances of com- 
plete recovery. 

A neighborly care for the health of the whole 
people may well begin in one's own household. 
To take the simplest illustration, stagnant 
water, even in an old can, breeds mosquitoes 
and mosquitoes spread disease. Care about 
garbage disposal and about the cleanliness of 
our own street, whether we are away in the 
dustier seasons or not; a determination to 
pollute neither the air nor the water by home 
processes or by those commercial processes for 
which we are responsible; the provision of 
well-ventilated sleeping rooms for our servants 
— a nice sense of the relation of all these homely 



n8 The Good Neighbor 

things to patriotism and to religion is the basis 
upon which the welfare of our neighbors finally 
rests. 

Among the diseases that we now know how 
to prevent — dysentery, typhoid, yellow fever, 
&c, — the one that has caused the greatest suf- 
fering and mortality is tuberculosis. The 
crusade against tuberculosis illustrates admir- 
ably the fundamental difference between the 
effectual and the ineffectual way of dealing 
with distress. We have seen that the period 
of many funds, the "town period" of relief, 
touched no cause of poverty without aggravat- 
ing it. It encouraged child labor, overcrowd- 
ing, and all the social evils that cause tuber- 
culosis; it then cared for the tuberculous patient 
and his family in such a way as to spread the 
disease, or else it sent him away to a more 
healthful climate so inadequately provided with 
means to assure rest and treatment that he 
soon died. 

We learn slowly and then still more slowly 
we apply what we learn. As early as 1839, an 
English physician advocated nutritious food, 
fresh air and constant supervision in the treat- 



The Invalid 119 

ment of consumption; Koch discovered the 
tubercle bacillus in 1882; but not until 1902, 
when the New York Charity Organization 
Society organized its Committee on the Pre- 
vention of Tuberculosis, did we begin in this 
country an active popular campaign to secure 
adequate treatment looking to cure for poor 
consumptives, and to impress upon all the 
people the communicable and curable nature of 
the disease. 

The crusade thus begun is going to educate 
our countrymen in habits that will prevent not 
only tuberculosis but many other forms of 
disease. 

Before long, the town or country house will 
seem badly built that does not provide upper 
porches for sleeping outdoors, and that does not 
secure the greatest possible allowance of sunlight 
for living and sleeping rooms. We shall learn to 
give preference to those fabrics that do not catch 
or hold the dust. We shall make short shrift of 
the board of health that passes diseased cattle or 
impure milk. We shall give larger powers to 
such boards in order that they may not only con- 
trol the movements of tuberculous patients who 



120 The Good Neighbor 

are careless in their personal habits, but may pro- 
vide places for their proper care. We shall insist 
upon the prompt disinfection of all rooms in 
which such patients have lived. We shall learn 
to seek expert advice in the earliest symptoms of 
the disease, and shall secure healthful employ- 
ments for those who have been cured. We shall 
learn the value of the simplest foods. We shall 
learn that these things are far more important than 
medicines, though a great physician declares that 
man is the only animal born with a thirst for 
drugs. 

And most of this newly acquired wisdom will 
bring increased well-being to those who are not 
sick. When it does, let them remember that 
they owe their new blessings to those who 
strove to imitate the Good Samaritan and 
succor the wounded traveller. Anything done 
now to help this particular cause, which is a 
battle not yet won but soon to be, is a contribu- 
tion toward the welfare of the whole human race. 

The newly aroused interest in all matters 
affecting health suggests that upon this side we 
might find our best means of attacking some 
of the other evils that beset our neighbors. 



The Invalid 121 

One of the greatest of these is intemperance. 
Next to licentiousness it still stands as the 
personal habit that causes most poverty and 
degeneration, not only in the victim himself 
but in his offspring. Might we not attack both 
of these causes more effectively if we sought 
and followed the leadership of courageous 
physicians who could tell the truth about 
alcoholism and licentiousness plainly, but fairly 
and dispassionately ? On the health side too 
we need many more facts and studies as to the 
social cost of child labor. We know that its 
cost to the individual and to the community is 
very heavy, but we need many more details 
than we now have. 

Advocates of a large group of other under- 
takings for social betterment could probably find, 
in the present state of public sentiment, their 
most effective appeal in emphasizing the relation 
of each to the public health. I refer to the bet- 
terment of the physical welfare of school chil- 
dren, the making of organized play co-extensive 
with our school system, the systematic study of 
dangerous occupations and of the occupations of 
married women and girls, the better sanitation of 



122 The Good Neighbor 

factories and workshops, and the application of 
strict sanitary tests to newly arrived immigrants. 
All of these have a very direct relation to public 
health, and on this side the people are most will- 
ing to listen and to act. 

But our city and State governments have 
much to answer for, and so have we who per- 
mit them still to tamper with such vital questions 
as the water and milk supply, sewage disposal, 
housing conditions, contagious diseases, and 
food adulteration. Whenever, as voters, we 
neglect these questions for partisan or personal 
considerations, we "pass by on the other side." 

No one will undertake, probably, to gather 
the addresses of all the agencies in a large city 
for the relief and treatment of the sick. Those 
that will be found indispensable will be the 
bureau of health, the larger hospitals and dis- 
pensaries, the anti-tuberculosis society, the 
visiting nurses, the sick diet kitchens, the modi- 
fied milk stations, and the homes for con- 
valescents. 



IX. 

The Contributor. 

TN seven successive chapters, we have fol- 
lowed the fortunes of the city neighbors of the 
good neighbor. We have seen them as children, 
as toilers, as tenants, we have seen them as 
vagrants and as the victims of unavoidable 
misfortune and disease. The good neighbor 
himself now concerns us, first as the faithful 
steward of the fortune, be it large or small, 
that has been entrusted to his keeping, and then 
as a member of some Christian church, and as 
one pledged, therefore, to a larger neighborli- 
ness. 

Every genuine advance has brought with it 
certain drawbacks during the period of read- 
justment. The new crusades against contagion 
made people unduly timid for awhile about 
contact with tuberculous patients who were 
well-trained in so caring for themselves as to 
protect others; this worked real hardship to 
individual consumptives who w T ere excluded 
123 



124 The Good Neighbor 

from hotels, boarding houses and workshops 
unnecessarily. The newer charity has been 
made an excuse by those who seek excuses for 
not giving. It has brought to light ten real 
needs that could be met effectively, has revealed 
ten chances of giving for every one that it has 
shut off, yet the timid giver has undoubtedly 
been made more timid by its habit of truth- 
telling. 

The time has come to point out that one of 
the evils of the "town period" of relief was its 
niggardliness. People gave little for fear of 
pauperizing the recipients, and this little 
(usually the same amount to each) given to 
many tided them over into next week's misery, 
but kept them in a state of wretchedness. Large 
gifts have at least one advantage over small, 
that they are likely to have a greater educational 
value. In giving large sums, we are usually 
careful to know beforehand what we are about, 
and having given, we are more likely to observe 
the result. To spend $100 in $1.50 or $2 
grocery orders, given at irregular intervals dur- 
ing a long period of time, is seldom helpful 
either to the giver, the receiver, or the inter- 



The Contributor 125 

mediary. There is a result, of course, but it 
is seldom positive and definite. To spend the 
same sum of money in a lump, in setting some 
member of the family up in business or in re- 
moving all of them to a different environment, 
or in securing special care for an invalid, is a 
challenge at once to the one who gives, the one 
who receives, and the one who devises the plan 
and undertakes to see it through. It may fail, 
but at least the reason for failure will appear, 
and the experience won will be helpful in 
future dealings with the particular applicant 
and with all others. The applicant will escape, 
too, that speculative attitude, that waiting for 
something to happen, which is part of the 
pauper habit of mind and the natural result 
of small doles. 

When we turn from this direct giving to 
individuals in need — which is the very best 
kind of giving so long as it is based upon a 
knowledge of real conditions and seeks to re- 
move the causes of distress — when we turn 
from the consideration of the good neighbor's 
direct giving, and think of him as a contributor 
to diverse causes, the most obvious fact is that, 



126 The Good Neighbor 

whenever his goodness is at all well known, he 
is simply overwhelmed with appeals by cir- 
cular, by personal letter, and by visitation 
from collectors paid and unpaid. The most 
unneighborly thing that he can do is to refuse 
all, for some at least are the true successors 
of the Samaritan and of the innkeeper. The 
next most unneighborly thing that he can do is 
to give to all, or to give and refuse at random, to 

Let twenty pass and stone the twenty -first, 
Loving not, hating not, just choosing so. 

In this way he will hamper good work by 
supporting bad work, and will be giving a new 
lease of life to the stupid, the reactionary, and 
the actively vicious. 

What should the contributor know before he 
contributes ? The Chicago Bureau of Charities 
suggests the following list of questions, answers 
to which may be taken as the minimum of in- 
formation necessary for an intelligent decision: 

Is this charity genuine or fraudulent ? 

Does it meet a real need in the community ? 

Is it well managed ? 

Does it employ approved methods : 



The Contributor 127 

Are its financial affairs conducted in a business- 
like manner ? 

Does it resort to extravagant methods of rais- 
ing money ? 

Does it account properly for all income and 
expenditure ? 

What are its sources of income ? 

How much income does it require ? 

What commission is paid to the agent who 
asks the contribution ? 

If tickets to an entertainment are offered for 
sale, how large a proportion of the proceeds will 
actually reach the charity ? 

The Bureau also offers to find the answers 
to these questions about any chanty in Chicago. 
A few other chanty organization societies 
furnish confidential reports to members con- 
cerning any local charity 

Commercial agencies have been organized in 
some cities to make reports not only upon chari- 
ties but upon appeals from educational concerns 
and upon advertising schemes. In so far as these 
agencies attempt to report upon charities, their 
work, as it has come under my personal observa- 
tion, is far from satisfactory. The presence of 
influential names upon a directorate or upon an 



iz8 The Good Neighbor 

advisory board, for instance, seems to paralyze 
them, though the most fraudulent of promoters 
are usually able to secure respectable backing. I 
have known these reporting agencies to make 
favorable reports about very doubtful undertak- 
ings. The tests that they are intelligent enough 
to apply, moreover, are elementary ; a charity 
might meet them all and still be doing great harm 
to the poor. It would seem best, therefore, to 
confine their work to its legitimate field of report- 
ing upon business enterprises, and to seek advice 
about charitable undertakings from charitable ex- 
perts who are known to be both courageous and 
fair-minded. 

It takes courage to tell the truth about 
charities that are well-intentioned but mis- 
taken, for good intentions (though we have 
authority for believing that they are chiefly 
useful as paving material) have yet a certain 
sanctity in our eyes. 

Heavily endowed charities that are inde- 
pendent of public opinion and whose managers 
have grown lethargic cannot be influenced by 
the intelligent criticism of contributors, but all 
charities appealing annually for support can be 
still further demoralized or else greatly improved 



The Contributor 129 

by the contributor's attitude. He can hold them 
up to a high sense of professional responsibility; 
he can show his contempt for the charity that 
does more for the applicant with a wealthy 
patron than it does for the applicant without 
such influence; he can frown upon large com- 
missions to collectors and upon tickets for 
expensive entertainments; he can discourage 
the tendency to bid for support by working for 
figures; he can discover what proportion of 
the expense is borne by directors who are able 
to contribute, and, more important still, whether 
they really direct the policy of the charity or 
are mere figure-heads; he can ask of every 
hospital or dispensary not merely the number 
of patients treated, but the quantity and quality 
of care given in each case; of a relief society, 
not the number of tons, pounds or yards of stuff 
it has dispensed, but the number of families 
that it has made really better ofF; of every 
charity he can demand to know not so much the 
amount spent in salaries as the quality of work 
done by those to whom the salaries are paid. 

This question of salaries is an important one. 
Considerable sums may be wasted on inefH- 
9 



130 The Good Neighbor 

cient employees who are in demand nowhere 
else, and much larger sums may be well spent 
upon those who serve the poor with intelli- 
gence and devotion. When we pay to provide 
the poor with a district nurse, we do not say 
that we are spending our money on salaries pro- 
vided the nurse is a good one, we say we 
are spending money on the poor. When a 
society has anything to do with relief work, 
contributors immediately begin to figure the 
cost of " giving away a dollar," and will charge 
against that dollar the cost of every other 
task that it undertakes, from the rescue of work- 
ing children and the punishment of wife deserters 
up to the most difficult remedial measures. 

When people manufacture shoes, do they 
charge up the cost of all the labor that goes into 
their making to the administration account ? 
What is spent in the office of a charitable 
society on a bookkeeper, on a collector, on 
office rent, on gas, on heat, should be charged 
to the administration account; but what is 
spent on the labor of devoted men and women 
who give their lives to mending the broken for- 
tunes of the needy, doing for them every con- 



The Contributor 131 

ceivable service from the lowliest to the highest, 
surely to charge all that against the cost of 
"giving away a dollar" is to do a very stupid 
thing. And yet people are guilty of ir every- 
where, and everywhere does the plain state- 
ment of work done serve as the best defense. 



During a secretary's first year in charge of a 
large charity organization society, some of her 
directors, fearing that she might be a bit of a 
fanatic, urged upon her the importance of seeing 
that the poor were kept warm and had enough to 
eat in winter, for that was, after all, the most 
important thing. 

But two or three years later, when one of 
these same directors read a record that she showed 
him of a poor tuberculous woman who, with 
her little boy, had lived in a wretched lodging 
and received a seventy -five cent grocery order 
every week from a relief society, he acquired a 
new set of convictions. All references in an- 
other city proved false, but the charity agent hap- 
pened to ask the boy what school he had attended 
there, and this one clue had brought out a most in- 
teresting and strange story of a well-to-do home, 
a feeble-minded daughter wandering away from it 



132 The Good Neighbor 

with her one child six months before, tuberculosis 
contracted by exposure and lack of food, and a vain 
search for her in many cities; finally — forty-eight 
hours after the inquiry — the daughter was re-estab- 
lished at home with a trained nurse, the boy was 
back in school, and the ugly, distorted conditions 
of their two lives were righted. Which was 
better, the grocery order or the adequate care ? 
A few weeks after reading this record, the 
director was told by an acquaintance that his 
society spent too much money on salaries and not 
enough on relief. The remark made him rather 
warm, and he retorted with vigor that the kind 
of service that this agent had rendered was just 
the thing of all others that the poor needed, and 
that such service was in no wise inconsistent with 
adequate relief; that strangely enough the cham- 
pions of merely feeding and warming people and 
doing nothing more for them had never done even 
that adequately, and that it had remained for 
societies such as his to raise and spend large sums 
on individual cases. 

The advance in really helpful benevolence 
has been so great, and opportunities for the 
useful expenditure of money are now so plenti- 
ful — expenditures paying dividends in better 



The Contributor 133 

health, better morals, better earning power, 
better citizens — that the encouragement of 
fraudulent and mistaken charity by careless 
givers is more inexcusably careless now than 
it ever was before. 

But every new form of effective philan- 
thropy has its fraudulent imitations. One such, 
claiming to be a national crusade against tuber- 
culosis, was engineered recently by a mere 
adventurer who knew how to get up attractive 
circulars. He obtained the backing of a man 
of science, of the wife of a bishop, of a promi- 
nent physician, and of many others, collected 
several thousand dollars and then moved out 
in the night to avoid paying office rent. One 
very disgraceful concern, claiming to support 
day nurseries in several cities by the sale of a 
paper, still operates through its canvassers in 
the business sections of some of our large cities 
despite repeated exposures. The evidence re- 
quired in false pretense cases is such that it is 
very difficult to secure the conviction of this 
type of criminal. 

The contributor should also be on his guard 
against self-appointed missionaries, founders of 



X34 The Good Neighbor 

charities who are their chief executive officers, 
and professional promoters. The self-appointed 
missionary and almoner, who makes a practice 
of soliciting and dispensing the alms of others, 
may be honest, but often he is not, and there 
is no possible check upon his operations. He 
is placed in the awkward position, moreover, 
of having to put a valuation upon his own ser- 
vices. Founders of charities who select a board 
of directors who in turn go through the form of 
selecting the founder for superintendent, chief 
executive officer and financier, are also placed 
in an awkward position, and the institution so 
organized will sometimes bear watching. 6i Pro- 
fessional promoters" are those who make a 
business of getting up entertainments for the 
benefit of charities. Well-dressed women, some- 
times passing for directors or friends of a certain 
charity, go to business houses and homes to 
sell tickets. No check upon sales is possible, 
and very unscrupulous men and women have 
been employed in this business. Two rules will 
protect the contributor: Never buy tickets for 
charitable entertainments except from those 
personally known to you. Threaten to with- 



The Contributor 135 

draw support from any charity that authorizes 
professional promoters to trade upon its name. 

He who seeks wise counsel before giving and 
who follows up the result sympathetically after 
giving can double the pleasure of his gift. He 
can quadruple it by becoming actively interested 
in some good cause. I know few happier people 
than those who spend their money liberally in 
furthering some benevolent object with which 
they are personally identified, and who follow 
this up by spending their time liberally in mak- 
ing the gift effective. But it is not always 
possible to command the free use of one's time 
and money both together, so that gift by will 
must still remain a favorite way of rendering 
neighborly and helpful service. 

Testators are usually actuated by the best of 
motives, but still they can do harm, or their 
gift can cease to do good as circumstances 
change. In England, the classic instance is 
Betton's bequest of £22,000 for the redemption 
of British slaves in Turkey and Barbary. The 
wisest in our day will be rash if they assume 
that they can forecast the future better than 



136 The Good Neighbor 

Betton did. The capture of British sailors off 
the Barbary coast ceased many years ago, and 
other social changes quite as great and greater 
are sure in the future to make our present 
testamentary endeavors seem foolish. 

A citizen of Philadelphia in the borough of 
Southwark, who was a member of the American 
or Know Nothing party, died in 1849 leaving 
enough money to purchase about 1450 tons of 
coal annually. This was to be distributed to 
widows "born within the limits of the United 
States of America whose husbands shall have 
died within the present defined boundaries of the 
district of Southwark." But Southwark has 
now become the center of Philadelphia's foreign 
population, and widows whose husbands have 
died there in recent years have not usually been 
born in this country. In another twenty years 
it may become impossible to fulfil the conditions 
of this trust, although the gift is a pure dole and 
widows in good circumstances may and do claim 
their share. 

The remedy for these evils is in the testator's 
hands. Beyond a period of twenty-five years 
the intelligent giver will not impose rigid condi- 



The Contributor 137 

tions, he will understand that if he is competent 
to frame a bequest wisely for this generation and 
the beginning of the next, his representatives in 
future times will also be wise enough, probably, 
to adapt it to changed circumstances. 

In another class belong the bequests that 
were ill-advised from the beginning, such as 
those to create new institutions where institu- 
tions already existing were doing their work 
well but needed further support. Our cities 
become burdened with too many small and 
inadequately supported charities for the ac- 
complishment of the same set of objects. It 
is well to consult the published directories of 
charities before deciding on the creation of any 
new agency; it is better still to consult some 
person who knows the city's resources thor- 
oughly. In most American cities, two classes 
are still very inadequately provided for, the aged 
poor and convalescents. The better endowment 
of existing homes and the creation of new ones 
for both of these classes of dependents is needed. 

Many donors have a long list of charities to 
which they are in the habit of giving a fixed 
sum annually. If the list is made out with care 



138 The Good Neighbor 

and revised frequently, to make sure that the 
present management of each charity on the 
list is meeting present needs, this is an excellent 
plan. One practice of the charitable giver 
needs amendment, and that is the habit of 
giving the same sum to everything; the amount 
given should bear some proportion to the ser- 
vice rendered. It is not quite fair to give $25 
annually to a little shelter that cares very in- 
adequately for sixty transients a year, and the 
same amount to the largest unendowed charity 
in the city. 

After all these cautions have been duly set 
down, however, the great fact about giving is 
that we double our riches by sharing them, and 
the rediscovery of this truth, running parallel 
as it does with the greed for acquisition which 
also characterizes our times, is the most en- 
couraging single fact in the story of twentieth 
century neighborliness. 



X 

The Church Member. 

\ RRIVED at the last stage in this superficial 
* ^ survey of charity on its neighborly side, I 
am forcibly reminded of one who was called 
from this earth some years ago, but whose min- 
istry in a large city church still remains an in- 
spiration to many. His creed and mine differed 
widely and I seldom heard him preach, but 
there was no public task with which I was 
associated that did not show the influence of 
his daily endeavor to apply the Gospel of Christ 
to the life of the city in which we both worked. 
The city's great network, with its tangles here, 
its gaps there, its complex of relations, political, 
educational, industrial, social — this huge net 
and its motley contents he saw largely and 
sanely, but with an intense compassion for the 
spiritually undernourished that were caught 
within its mesh. 

Some clergymen who feel this " call of the 
city" fling themselves unselfishly into its life ? 
139 



140 The Good Neighbor 

but dissipate their strength by becoming di- 
rectors of many boards, attending many meet- 
ings, and making many addresses on a great 
variety of topics. This was not his way. Hav- 
ing in mind always that the exercise and develop- 
ment of the members of his own congregation 
in the Christian life was his highest duty, he 
set himself the task of studying first the needs 
of the city in which they lived; then the possi- 
bilities both social and spiritual of the many 
agencies created to meet these needs; and last, 
the aptitudes and capacities of his people. 
The city was their workshop, and into it he fed 
them freely, associating them with every up- 
lifting work that was going forward. Some 
of his men visited prisons and became volunteer 
probation officers in charge of individual boys, 
others founded an equitable loan company for 
the poorer sort of borrowers, and many worked 
hard in municipal campaigns. The women of 
his church visited families in distress under the 
best guidance that he was able to secure for 
them, and gave efficient aid on hospital com- 
mittees and in children's work. 

The church had no group of charitable 



The Church Member 141 

buildings, no new charities to which it could 
point with pride; it was the city as a whole 
that bore eloquent witness to the power of his 
preaching. But in however many places out- 
side church boundaries his people may have 
made that power felt, all the work that they did 
was religious work; they always so regarded it, 
and their first loyalty was always to their 
church and its leader. Sometimes it seemed to 
me, an onlooker, that he played upon the com- 
munity as upon a great organ, drawling from it 
new and inspiring spiritual harmonies. 

This is not the only way in which a church 
may illustrate in the lives of its people the para- 
ble of the Samaritan; there are many ways, 
of course, varying with the capacities of clergy- 
men and of congregations, but this one way 
gave a whole denomination new dignity in the 
eyes of those who saw the far-reaching results. 

Consider for a moment a different church 
situation. A young clergyman is called to a 
well-established city church in which there are 
many charitable activities, including a ladies' 
relief society. He has high ideals of what a 
church should be and do. Denominational 



142 The Good Neighbor 

rivalries seem to him petty; to start an orphan- 
age or a diet kitchen or a mothers' meeting 
because the Baptists or the Presbyterians have 
started one in the same field is, in his opinion, 
hopelessly to confuse the church's true aim. 
What are some of the hindrances to the work 
of such a minister ? In the first place, he must 
overcome the inertia of the men and women in 
his own congregation. The natural selfishness 
of the human heart is best overcome by en- 
couraging every little flickering flame of desire 
to do good to others, and charitable activities 
assume a new importance in his eyes when, 
having shaken his people out of their smaller 
selves by his preaching of the Gospel, he real- 
izes the necessity of giving them ample oppor- 
tunity for the exercise of a newly awakened 
impulse. 

He turns to the relief society and other chari- 
ties of his church, and here, more often than not, 
is the beginning of his troubles. Our minister 
is a busy man. He is generous of his time and 
sympathy. In addition to the exacting duties 
of his church services, the sick, the tempted, 
and the stricken of his flock make heavy de- 



The Church Member 143 

mands upon him. It is not humanly possible 
for him to guide each stumbling beginner in 
charity to solid ground, and soon he discovers 
that, in the absence of experienced leadership, 
the benevolent intentions of his good people are 
being exercised at the expense of the church's 
poor or, too often, of some other church's poor, 
who are growing more and more dependent; 
instead of having heart put into them for the 
struggle of life, they are becoming less willing 
to struggle at all. He becomes sick at heart 
as he sees the results of that promiscuous dos- 
ing of social diseases which passes in his church 
for charity. 

It is unnecessary to tell the stories of children 
seven times baptized in other churches, of rent 
paid five times over, of Protestant fuel and 
Catholic groceries supplied, while the family 
earnings go in drink and in Sunday picnics. 
The waste of money and of time would be a 
small matter, if so many helpful ways of deal- 
ing with these same families were not set aside, 
and if the moral effect on his own people and 
on the poor were not so bad. Each has a dis- 
torted view of the other, and these unnatural 



144 The Good Neighbor 

relations of the dependent poor to careless 
givers have gone on so long that any sane and 
right relation is difficult to establish. On one 
point he is clear: He knows that his people 
will never win Heaven by making other human 
beings less human. The problem given him 
is how to turn this desire to do good, this initial 
charitable impulse, which is so hopeful an 
impulse in itself, into useful channels. 

Do I exaggerate the difficulty ? Many 
churches are fortunate enough to have in their 
membership, or else to secure, workers who are 
familiar with living conditions among the poor 
in the modern city, and who are able to give 
the time to teach beginners in the church's 
charitable activities to do their work thoroughly 
and well. But lacking such aids (and many 
churches do lack them) our clergyman should 
be able to find among the city's charitable 
societies and institutions a sympathetic under- 
standing of his needs and a willingness to meet 
them. Too often he will find instead a short- 
sighted devotion to their own aims. But from 
those charities to which he decides to detail 
some of his parishioners for experience and 



The Church Member 145 

training he has a right to demand knowledge 
and skill in charitable work, and complete 
indifference as to who gets the credit, the 
church or the charity, so long as the work is 
well done. If workers who have been sent 
from the church to engage in school visiting 
under the public education association, or in 
institution visiting under a hospital superin- 
tendent, or in family visiting under the charity 
organization society, or in club work under 
a settlement, become very efficient and yet 
leave to take the leadership in some church 
work, the charity that loses them should count 
it clear gain if they are continuing to do good 
work elsewhere. 

In the relation between the church and the 
secular charities, the church should not be 
expected to do all the giving, though she should 
learn to interpret the term "religious work" 
broadly. The church supplies the motive; the 
charities should supply the method. Some- 
times, in her absorption in even more impor- 
tant tasks, the church has failed to accumulate 
and systematize the experience that is now 
available about social diseases and their cure. 
10 



146 The Good Neighbor 

But method and motive have need of each 
other. Any assumption of a monopoly of 
wisdom on the part of the secular charitable 
agencies is absurd — as though the city's water- 
pipes and reservoirs should grow vain and think 
themselves the sources of supply! For centu- 
ries charity has looked to the church and must 
continue to look to it as the uncontaminated 
spring in the hills, the source of its power. 
The church, on the other hand, will find the 
charitable agencies — those described in this 
book, for instance — a modern convenience, if 
no more. 

There is a development in charitable work 
that it has often cheered me in times of depres- 
sion to dwell upon, but I mention it here because 
it bears a close relation to the development of 
church work. Let us stand aside, for a moment, 
and strive to see the forces of our civilization 
forever remoulding the objects and methods 
of charity. 

Looked at in the large, the process seems to 
show a perpetual inflowing on the one side of 
new interests and new aims, and on the other a 



The Church Member 147 

perpetual absorption of whole groups of chari- 
table activities back into the community life. 
To take one illustration out of many: Our 
charitable concern for children satisfied itself? 
at one time, by establishing foundling asylums, 
orphanages and charity day schools. The 
schools met so vital a need that they were ab- 
sorbed into the normal life of the community 
and became a part of greater educational 
systems, all of which had been of charitable 
origin. But no sooner had charity relinquished 
control of our schools than we find her discover- 
ing new needs and annexing new territory — 
the protection of children ' from cruelty; their 
care in private families and in kindergartens; 
their physical training and welfare; their 
protection from premature employment. And 
these new objects or a part of them will, in time, 
be reabsorbed into the daily life of the whole 
people. Savings banks, in another depart- 
ment of charitable work, began as charities, 
but have been so completely absorbed that few 
know their origin as a part of Hamburg's 
relief system; hospitals have been partly ab- 
sorbed; and a host of other useful institutions 



148 The Good Neighbor 

illustrate in their development this same process. 
So that we find charity occupying a shifting 
ground — forever exploring, annexing, and re- 
linquishing. 

The church member, as he watches this 
movement, so full of promise for humanity, 
will often be puzzled to fix the exact relation of 
the Christian church to the process. The 
relation cannot be clearly defined indeed; no 
one should attempt to dogmatize about it, no 
one can prophesy how far the secularization of 
charity may go, or how soon it may be checked 
by a reaction in favor of church control. In 
certain fields requiring concerted action on a 
large scale, denominational differences stand 
stubbornly in the way of a reaction* It would 
not be possible, for instance, to secure within 
church lines the needed compactness of organi- 
zation for an effective crusade against child 
labor, or tuberculosis, or bad housing; and yet 
no one of these campaigns can succeed without 
the sympathy of the church. 

Is not this question of the relation of charity 
to the church a part of a larger question ? Do 
we not discover, in the church itself, though 



The Church Member 149 

upon a far grander and more impressive scale, 
the same process of exploration, annexation and 
relinquishment that we have noted in charity ? 
The priests of old were the first physicians, the 
prophets were the first statesmen, the religious 
teachers were the conservators of learning 
through ages that would have been dark indeed 
but for the flame that they nourished. And 
yet, one by one, wholly or in part, the church 
has relinquished control of these functions of 
healing and governing and teaching. Few will 
question that her spiritual life has been strength- 
ened thereby. 

And what of the relinquished activities ? 
What of medicine, statecraft, education ? — how 
have they prospered ? Speaking for our own 
country alone and more especially for its cities, 
their growth reveals some great lacks, and the 
greatest of these is the lack of spiritual power. 
The time seems ripe — and here and there 
religious leaders are realizing it and rising to 
the opportunity — not for a return of the church 
to the old control, but for a return to these 
secularized fields of endeavor through the path- 
way of service. 



150 The Good Neighbor 

What we win through authority, we lose; 
what we win through influence, the influence 
of understanding and caring, we keep. Every 
now and again one has a vision of the church 
moving forward in this way to larger achieve- 
ments, annexing no temporal kingdom this 
time but a spiritual kingdom, winning the 
minds and hearts of men the world over through 
a larger, a more inclusive neighborliness, which 
shall break down, in the field of social service 
at least, the old division between religious and 
secular. 

I have said that there are spiritual lacks in 
medicine and statecraft and education. The 
wisest of our doctors are beginning to realize 
that, before they can succeed in the treatment 
of a large group of diseases, they must win a 
larger social and spiritual outlook. Politics 
in our large cities — can we doubt it ? — needs 
religion far more than it needs any other one 
thing. 

We are dodging the issue of religious instruc- 
tion in our schools; denominational differences 
make its solution difficult. But nowhere could 
the church do a larger work of neighborliness 



The Church Member 151 

than in fostering a deeper interest in the condi- 
tion of school children.* 

And in so far as charity has been secularized, 
there too — in what is coming to be so important 
and formative an influence in our large cities 
— we need the quickening of the religious spirit, 
we need the more active participation of church 
people. Turning over the pages of the more 
recent books on social work, one is saddened 
to find how largely it is taken for granted that 
things are to be made better by legislation and 
by generous expenditures of money, by these 
two things alone. "Just because it is impor- 
tant," says Rev. Clement Rogers, " for Christians 
who differ fundamentally on points of doctrine 
to keep rigidly separate in matters of worship 
and religious organization, it is important that 
they should co-operate on the neutral ground 



* A friend sends me this quotation from Bishop Westcott : 
' ' With the schoolmasters, I believe, more than with the clergy, 
rests the shaping of that generation which will decide in a large 
degree what the England of the future will be, — turbulent, divided, 
self-indulgent, materialized, or quickened with a power of spiritual 
lympathy, striving toward a realization of a national ideal, touched 
already with that spirit of sacrifice which regards every gift of for- 
tune and place and character as held for the common good." 



152 The Good Neighbor 

of social work, and on every occasion where 
no principle is sacrificed by so doing." This 
from the side of the church, but the social work 
itself needs that spiritual quality which devoted 
church members and they alone can bring into it. 

When Christ, replying to the lawyer, gave 
that perfect picture of neighborliness in which 
"each phrase is a separate gem," He addressed 
himself not merely to answering the question, 
evasively asked, of Who is my neighbor ? He 
had in mind the first and wider question of 
What shall I do to inherit eternal life ? Thus 
did He relate the humblest duties of our daily 
life to the deepest need of the spirit. Only 
half of the law is fulfilled in love to God, and 
"he that loveth not his brother whom he hath 
seen, how can he love God whom he hath not 
seen ?" 



Addresses, Hours, and Telephone Numbers 
of the Local Charities Recommended 
in this Book for the Use of the Good 
Neighbor. 



..' 



P. I/. 117 



THE PUBLIC LIBRARY 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 



Ifi__ : Ml6g. 



TJoQol 



All losses or injuries beyond reasonable wear, how- 
ever caused, must be promptly adjusted by the person 
to whom the book is charged. 

Fine for over detention, two cents a day (Sundays 
and holidays excluded). 



V. 9. OOVMNMBHT PRIST!! 



